Rex in your country? what counsels were taken, what endeavours used, and what disturbances ensued thereupon in Holland? and to what pass things might have been brought by this time? How slavery and a new master were ready prepared for you; and how near expiring that liberty of yours, asserted and vindicated by so many years war and toil, would have been ere now, if it had not taken breath again by the timely death of a certain rash young gentleman. But our author begins to strut again, and to feign wonderful tragedies; "whomsoever this dreadful news reached, (to wit, the news of Salmasius's parricidial barbarisms,) all of a sudden, as if they had been struck with lightning, their hair stood an end, and their tongues clove to the roof of their mouth." Which let natural philosophers take notice of, (for this secret in nature was never discovered before,) that lightning makes men's hair stand on end. But who knows not that little effeminate minds are apt to be amazed at the news of any extraordinary great action; and that then they show themselves to be, what they really were before, no better than so many stocks? "Some could not refrain from tears;" some little women at court, I suppose, or if there be any more effeminate than they, of whose number Salmasius himself being one, is by a new metamorphis become a fountain near akin to his name, (Salmacis,) and with his counterfeit flood of tears prepared over night, endeavours to emasculate generous minds: I advise therefore, and wish them to have a care; They that had more courage" (which yet he expresses in miserable bald Latin, as if he could not so much as speak of men of courage and magnanimity in proper words) "were set on fire with indignation to that degree, that they could hardly contain themselves." Those furious Hectors we value not of a rush. We have been accustomed to rout such bullies in the field with a true sober courage; a courage becoming men that can contain themselves, and are in their right wits. "There were none that did not curse the authors of so horrible a villany." But yet, you say, their tongues clove to the roof of their mouths; and if you mean this of our fugitives only, I wish they had clove there to this day; for we know very well, that there is nothing more common with them, than to have their mouths full of curses and imprecations, which indeed all good men abominate, but withal despise. As for others, it is hardly credible, that when they heard the news of our having inflicted a capital punishment upon the king, there should any be found, especially in a free state, so naturally adapted to slavery as either to speak ill of us, or so much as to censure what we had done. Nay, it is highly probable, that all good men applauded us, and gave God thanks for so illustrious, so exalted a piece of justice; and for a caution so very useful to other princes. In the mean time, as for those fierce, those steel-hearted men, that, you say, take on for, and bewail so pitifully, the lamentable and wonderful death I know not who; them I say, together with their tinkling advocate, the dullest that ever appeared since the name of a king was born and known in the world, we shall even let whine on, till they cry their eyes. out. But in the mean time, what schoolboy, what little insignificant monk, could not have made a more elegant speech for the king, and in better Latin, than this royal advocate has done? But it would be folly in me to make such particular animadversions upon his childishness and frenzies throughout his book, as I do here upon a few in the beginning of it; which yet I would be willing enough to do, (for we hear that he is swelled with pride and conceit to the utmost degree imaginable,) if the undigested and immethodical bulk of his book did not protect him. He was resolved to take a course like the soldier in Terence, to save his bacon; and it was very cunning in him, to stuff his book with so much puerility, and so many silly whimsies, that it might nauseate the smartest man in the world to death to take notice of them all. Only I thought it might not be amiss to give a specimen of him in the preface; and to let the serious reader have a taste of him at first, that he might guess by the first dish that is served up, how noble an entertainment the rest are like to make; and that he may imagine with himself what an infinite number of fooleries and impertinencies must needs be heaped up together in the body of the book, when they stand so thick in the very entrance into it, where, of all other places, they ought to have been shunned. His tittle-tattle that follows, and his sermons fit for nothing but to be wormeaten, I can easily pass by; as for any thing in them relating to us, we doubt not in the least, but that what has been written and published by authority of parliament, will have far greater weight with all wise and sober men, than the calumnies and lies of one single impudent little fellow; who being hired by our fugitives, their country's enemies, has scraped together, and not scrupled to publish in print, whatever little story any one of them that employed him put into his head. And that all men may plainly see how little conscience he makes of setting down any thing right or wrong, good or bad, I desire no other witness than Salmasius himself. In his book, entitled, "Apparatus contra Primatum Papæ," he says, "there are most weighty reasons why the church ought to lay aside episcopacy, and return to the apostolical institution of presbyters: that a far greater mischief has been introduced into the church by episcopacy, than the schisms themselves were, which were before apprehended: that the plague which episcopacy introduced, depressed the whole body of the church under a miserable tyranny; nay, had put a yoke even upon the necks of kings and princes: that it would be more beneficial to the church, if the whole hierarchy itself were extirpated, than if the pope only, who is the head of it, were laid aside," page 160. "That it would be very much for the good of the church, if episcopacy were taken away, together with the papacy that if episcopacy were once taken down, the papacy would fall of itself, as being founded upon it," page 171. He says, "he can show very good reasons why episcopacy ought to be put down in those kingdoms that have renounced the pope's supremacy; but that he can see no reason for retaining it there: that a reformation is not entire, that is defective in this point: that no reason can be alleged, no probable cause assigned, why the supremacy of the pope being once disowned, episcopacy should notwithstanding be retained," page 197.-Though he had wrote all this, and a great deal more to this effect, but four years ago, he is now become so vain and so impudent withal, as to accuse the parliament of England, "for not only turning the bishops out of the house of lords, but for abolishing episcopacy itself." Nay, he persuades us to receive episcopacy, and defends it by the very same reasons and arguments, which with a great deal of earnestness he had confuted himself in that former book; to wit, "that bishops were necessary and ought to have been retained, to prevent the springing up of a thousand pernicious sects and heresies." Crafty turncoat! are you not ashamed to shift hands thus in things that are sacred, and (I had almost said) to betray the church; whose most solemn institutions you seem to have asserted and vindicated with so much noise, that when it should seem for your interest to change sides, you might undo and subvert all again with the more disgrace and infamy to yourself? It is notoriously known, that when both houses of parliament, being extremely desirous to reform the church of England by the pattern of our reformed churches, had resolved to abolish episcopacy, the king first interposed, and afterwards waged war against them chiefly for that very cause; which proved fatal to him. Go now and boast of your having defended the king; who, that you might the better defend him, do now openly betray and impugn the cause of the church, whose defence you yourself had formerly undertaken; and whose severest censures ought to be inflicted upon you. As for the present form of our government, since such a foreign insignificant professor as you, having laid aside your boxes and desks stuffed with nothing but trifles, which you might have spent your time better in putting into order, will needs turn busybody, and be troublesome in other men's matters, I shall return you this answer, or rather not to you, but to them that are wiser than yourself, viz. That the form of it is such as our present distractions will admit of; not such as were to be wished, but such as the obstinate divisions, that are amongst us, will bear. What state soever is pestered with factions, and defends itself by force of arms, is very just in having regard to those only that are sound and untainted, and in overlooking or secluding the rest, be they of the nobility or the common people; nay, though profiting by experience, they should refuse to be governed any longer either by a king or a house of lords. But in railing at that supreme council, as you call it, and at the chairman there, you make yourself very ridiculous; for that council is not the supreme council, as you dream it is, but appointed by authority of parliament, for a certain time only; and consisting of forty persons, for the most part members of parliament, any one of whom may be president if the rest vote him into the chair. And there is nothing more common, than for our parliaments to appoint committees of their own members; who, when so appointed, have power to meet where they please, and hold a kind of a little parliament amongst themselves. And the most weighty affairs are often referred to them, for expedition and secrecy; the care of the navy, the army, the treasury; in short, all things whatsoever relating either to war or peace. Whether this be called a council, or any thing else, the thing is ancient, though the name may be new; and it is such an institution, as no government can be duly administered without it. As for our putting the king to death, and changing the government, forbear your bawling, don't spit your venom, till, going along with you through every chapter, I show, whether you will or no, "by what law, by what right and justice," all that was done. But if you insist to know, "by what right, by what law;" by that law, I tell you, which God and nature have enacted, viz. that whatever things are for the universal good of the whole state, are for that reason lawful and just. So wise men of old used to answer such as you. You find fault with us for "repealing laws, that had obtained for so many years;" but you do not tell us whether those laws were good or bad, nor, if you did, should we heed what you said; for you, busy puppy, what have you to do with our laws? I wish our magistrates had repealed more than they have, both laws and lawyers; if they had, they would have consulted the interest of the Christian religion, and that of the people better than they have done. It frets you, that "hobgoblins, sons of the earth, scarce gentlemen at home, scarce known to their own countrymen, should presume to do such things." But you ought to have remembered, what not only the Scriptures, but Horace would have taught you, viz. -Valet ima summis Mutare, et insignem attenuat Deus, The power that did create, can change the scene Of things; make mean of great, and great of mean; But take this into the bargain. Some of those who, you say, be scarce gentlemen, are not at all inferior in birth to any of your party. Others, whose ancestors were not noble, have taken a course to attain to true nobility by their own industry and virtue, and are not inferior to men of the noblest descent. They had rather be called "sons of the earth," provided it be their own earth, (their own native country,) and act like men at home, than, being destitute of house or land, to relieve the necessities of nature in a foreign country by selling of smoke, as thou dost, an inconsiderable fellow and a jack-straw, and who dependest upon the good-will of thy masters for a poor stipend; for whom it were better to dispense with thy labours, and return to thy own kindred and countrymen, if thou hadst not this one piece of cunning, to babble out some silly prelections and fooleries at so good a rate amongst foreigners. You find fault with our magistrates. for admitting such "a common sewer of all sorts of sects." Why should they not? It belongs to the church to cast them out of the communion of the faithful; not to the magistrate to banish them the country, provided they do not offend against the civil laws of the state. Men at first united into civil societies, that they might live safely, and enjoy their liberty, without being wronged or oppressed; and that they might live religiously, and according to the doctrine of Christianity, they united themselves into churches. Civil societies have laws, and churches have a discipline peculiar to themselves, and far differing from each other. And this has been the occasion of so many wars in Christendom; to wit, because the civil magistrate and the church confounded their jurisdictions. Therefore we do not admit of the popish sect, so as to tolerate papists at all; for we do not look upon that as a religion, but rather as a hierarchical tyranny, under a cloak of religion, clothed with the spoils of the civil power, which it has usurped to itself, contrary to our Saviour's own doctrine. As for the independents, we never had any such amongst us, as you describe; they that we call independents, are only such as hold, that no classis or synods have a superiority over any particular church, and that therefore they ought all to be plucked up by the roots, as branches, or rather as the very trunk, of hierarchy itself; which is your own opinion too. And from hence it was that the name of independents prevailed amongst the vulgar. The rest of your preface is spent in endeavouring not only to stir up the hatred of all kings and monarchs against us, but to persuade them to make a general war upon us. Mithridates of old, though in a different cause, endeavoured to stir up all princes to make war upon the Romans, by laying to their charge almost just the same things that you do to ours: viz. that the Romans aimed at nothing but the subversion of all kingdoms, that they had no regard to any thing, whether sacred or civil, that from their very first rise, they never enjoyed any thing but what they had acquired by force, that they were robbers, and the greatest enemies in the world to monarchy. Thus Mithridates expressed himself in a letter to Arsaces, king of the Parthians. But how came you, whose business it is to make silly speeches from your desk, to have the confidence to imagine, that by your persuasions to take up arms, and sounding an alarm as it were, you should be able so much as to influence a king amongst boys at play; especially, with so shrill a voice, and unsavoury breath, that I believe, if you were to have been the trumpeter, not so much as Homer's mice would have waged war against the frogs? So little do we fear, you slug you, any war or danger from foreign princes through your silly rhetoric, who accusest us to them, just as if you were at play," that we toss kings' heads like balls; play at bowls with crowns; and regard sceptres no more than if they were fools' staves with heads on :" but you in the mean time, you silly loggerhead, deserve to have your bones well thrashed with a fool's staff, for thinking to stir up kings and princes to war by such childish arguments. Then you cry aloud to all nations, who, I know full well, will never heed what you say. You call upon that wretched and barbarous crew of Irish rebels too, to assert the king's party. Which one thing is sufficient evidence how much you are both a fool and a knave, and how you outdo almost all mankind in villainy, impudence, and madness; who scruple not to implore the loyalty and aid of an execrable people devoted to the slaughter, whom the king himself always abhorred, or so pretended, to have any thing to do with, by reason of the guilt of so much innocent blood, which they had contracted. And that very perfidiousness and cruelty which he endeavoured as much as he could to conceal, and to clear himself from any suspicion of, you, the most villainous of mortals, as fearing neither God nor man, voluntarily and openly take upon yourself. Go on then, undertake the king's defence at the encouragement and by the assistance of the Irish. You take care, and so you might well, lest any should imagine, that you were about to bereave Cicero or Demosthenes of the praise due to their eloquence, by telling us beforehand, that "you conceive you ought not to speak like an orator." It is wisely said of a fool; you conceive you ought not to do what is not in your power to do and who, that knows you never so little, ever expects any thing like an orator from you? Who neither uses, nor is able to publish, any thing that is elaborate, distinct, or has so much as sense in it; but like a second Crispin, or that little Grecian Tzetzes, you do but write a great deal, take no pains to write well; nor could write any thing well, though you took never so much pains. "This cause shall be argued (say you) in the hearing, and as it were before the tribunal, of all mankind." That is what we like so well, that we could now wish we had a discreet and intelligent adversary, and not such a hairbrained blunderbuss as you, to deal with. You conclude very tragically, like Ajax in his raving; "I will proclaim to heaven and earth the injustice, the villainy, the perfidiousness and cruelty of these men, and will deliver them over convicted to all posterity." flowers! that such a witless, senseless bawler, one that was born but to spoil or transcribe good authors, should think himself able to write any thing of his own, that will reach posterity, whom together with his frivolous scribbles, the very next age will bury in oblivion; unless this defence of the king perhaps may be beholden to the answer I give to it, for being looked into now and then. And I would entreat the illustrious states of Holland, to take off their prohibition, and suffer the book to be publicly sold. For when I have detected the vanity, ignorance, and falsehood, that it is full of, the farther it spreads the more effectually it will be suppressed. Now let us hear how he convicts us. B |