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never believe till it felt them, and will not believe when the impressions of them are worn off. This wise and good King, the same in all fortunes, was he that must pardon his enemies, some dust in these eyes of the nation, that the free-born projectors may more commodiously come at the head. And this was the great pride and luxury of the brotherhood in the former days of tyranny and civil combustion; when the sweating teachers, after a few winks and groans, began to thunder against a vain philosophy, and wet their handkerchiefs in running down the neces sity of human learning. This was not only inculcated from the tub, but from the press also in solemu formidable manner; as may be seen in the author? of Light out of Darkness and The White Stone. But here we find the republican doctors differed among themselves: For some were not absolutely for pulling down but only regulating the constitution of our academies, and proposing expedients for reforming of schools and promoting of all kinds of science. Thus speaks the author of Academiarum Examen, dedicated to Major general Lambert: 'Seeing Divine Providence hath made you (with the rest of those faithful and gallant men of the army) signally instrumental, 'both in redeeming the English liberty, almost drowned in the deluge of ty'ranny and self-interest, &c. I hope the same providence will also direct 'you to be assistant to continue the same, &c. And moreover, guide you to 'set your hand and endeavour for the purging and reformation of academies and the advancement of learning which hitherto hath been little promoted ' or looked into.'

"The author of the Examen did not merely find fault, censure and talk magisterially; but, with a seeming modesty (a quality unknown to our new regulator,) he confesses it is far more easy to demolish, than to erect a complete structure; especially for a single person of a mean talent: And after he had offered some plausible expedients for a rectification of Logic, Metaphysics, Grammar, Mathematics and natural Philosophy; he owns himself obnoxious to many errors; and hopes that better and more able pens will help to supply his defects.-With his new models, foreign experiments and ideals of government, and other chimerical bawbles, what a woful and sorry wight must he appear amongst a learned and venerable assembly? Nay, how would each junior sophister (lately dismist from school) give him cause to sneak, beg pardon, and repent, in the strength of Hesiod and Homer? The former of these (as Borrichius notes) has written with so much wisdom and acumen, that he may, even now, be read with singular advantage by those that apply themselves to politics and moral philosophy. The latter (as Rapin thinks) had the vastest, sublimest, and most universal genius that ever was: it was by his poems that all the worthies of antiquity were formed: From hence the lawgivers took the first plat-form of the laws they gave to mankind: The founders of monarchies and common-wealths from hence took the models of their polities: Hence the philosophers found the first principles of morality, which they have taught the people: Hence Kings and Princes have learnt the art to govern, and captains to form a battle, to encamp an army, to besiege towns, to fight and to gain victories, &c.

"The compilers of those statutes, which he ignorantly explodes, knew very well what they did; and though they had a different taste or notion of learning from what he entertains, yet it follows not, but they may have been in the right. As they could not then understand (as he over-wisely ntimates) the present state of learning in the world; so they never designed, that Students should be limited and tied all their lives to a particular system, when the empire of knowledge or philosophy should be enlarged. I know no greater assertors of philosophical liberty, than the gentlemen that have had their education in our universities: And if some are particularly (tho' not exclusively) directed to study Aristotle and his works, it is no more than what is proper, just, nay necessary, upon the account of extrinsical motives and inducements. For the Peripatetic terms, and modes of expression, are now interwoven throughout a great part of the RomanCatholic Theology, which is better defended by arguments drawn from a metaphysical system, than by reasons, texts, and deductions from holy writ; and if we cannot confront our enemies with their own weapons, and

but must except his friends out of pardon; he that, when all his subjects had sworn oaths of allegiance to him, must swear an oath devised by his subjects (called Covenant) against himself: He, without whom no oath could be imposed upon the subjects, hath an oath imposed upon him by his subjects, and in that oath must swear that [Episcopal government in the church Antichristian, which was the only christian government for fifteen define, divide, distinguish artificially, unravel cryptical syllogisms and subtile arguments, with equal facility and readiness, we may betray the cause which we would willingly maintain, and give them occasion to triumph. "The Greek and Latin Fathers encountered the Pagans, Jews, and Heretics, with such philosophical weapons, as the necessity of those times required; and it may look at this time like a kind of defection, a betraying the Protestant cause, to slight the logical and metaphysical learning taught in the universities: But this is no part of the prefacer's main care, nor does it (I believe) in the least concern his conscience. No: A KIng or no KinG, is now the grand question and important controversy among us; and a few generous republican notions about liberty out-weigh, with him, all the fearning and divinity of Europe. What profound notion of learning our prefacer has found out, for the instruction of mankind, I am not worthy to know; for I am no interpreter of dreams. He may value, for aught I know, the languages of Gypsies above Greek and Hebrew. He may extol, if he pleases, the inspection of urine above all parts of physical knowledge: He may fancy, perhaps, that the dissection of a flea or the tail of a fish, or such like curious employment, is a most admirable and useful part of natural philosophy; that calculating the nativity of a common-wealth, and the fall of a monarchy, is an excellent and profitable part of moderu astrology: This he may call speaking pertinently, and acting like a man; and the extinguishing all remorse, compassion and good nature, may pass for a subduing the passions in his philosophy.-One great reason, I suppose, that induced the Prefacer to undervalue the old philosophy, and Aristotelian doctrines, is this: Aristotle, it seems, both in his ethics and politics, affirms in plain terms, that of all forms of government the monarchical is the best: He asserts, that wise men are fitted by nature to command, and that others of strong bodies but weak intellectuals, are chiefly designed for subjection and obedience;' than which nothing can be more grating and disobliging to men of a republican temper and inclination.

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"Here let the generous reader give me leave to make a stand a while, and complain a little of the hard fate of learning in this age: Suppose a man has entertained and polished his mind and rational faculties with the works of those ancients, that rescued and preserved their natural reason and religion amidst all the wildnesses of pagan darkness and confusion, (such as Orpheus, Homer, Euripides, Eschylus, Menander, Xenophon, Socrates, Aristotle, Pythagoras, Hierocles and others,) together with all the divine and perfective discourses of Cicero, Seneca, Virgil, Horace, and the rest of the Grecian and Roman Poets and philosophers: Let him add to all these the pious and seraphical discourses of the Fathers; be able to recite and coufute all heresies from Nicholas and Cerinthus, Carpocrates and Valentinus, successively down to the times of John a Leyden, and all the rest of our modern innovators. Nay, though he comprehend all the rarities and treasures of the Vatican, the Escurial, the Ambrosian, Florentine, and Bodleian libraries; yet that very wretch, whose politics and reading never raised him higher than The Door of Hope, Poor Man's Cup, God's loud Call, A Token for Children, The Morning Seeker, Nonsuch Charles, The Assembly's Works, Scotch Psalms, and The Account of Denmark, shall start up as grand a resolver of cases, expounder of dark texts, confounder of heresies, and modeller of States, as the most celebrated oracle of divinity or law. Nay, a confident traveller, by virtue of a hard forehead, a set of stories and legerdemain of the pen, shall on a sudden transform the most excellent body of men into a loose pack of worldlings and silly graceless professors." Commonwealth's Man Unmasked.

hundred years: And when divines dispute that and other points probably, the poor King and his people must swear them peremp torily.

"These aforesaid assassinates [the members of the High Court of Justice]meet in the painted chamber, become now the Jesuits' chamber of meditation,* to consult about the slaughter; and being heated by one or two of their demagogues, that persuaded them that the saints should bind the kings in chains and the nobles with fetters of iron, beseeching them, with bended knees and lift-up eyes and hands, in the people's name, who yet were ready to have stoned them, not to let Benhadad go,—they dare (but guarded strongly by a set of executioners like themselves) to convene before them, Jan. 19, 1649, Charles, King of England, &c., now to be deprived of his life, as he had been before of his kingdoms. Here the conspiracy might be seen in a body, a poor pettifogger Bradshaw,† that had taken the oath of allegiance and supremacy but three weeks before, leading the herd as President, and the whole plot in his draught. The charge being read, his most excellent Majesty, (looking upon it as below him to interrupt the impudent libel and vie tongue with the Billingsgate court,) with a calmness, prudence and resolution peculiar to his royal breast, asked the assassinates, by what authority they brought a king, their most rightful sovereign, against the public faith, so lately given him at a treaty between him and his two Houses? And upon the prating foreman's bold suggestion, that they were satisfied in their own authority, replying rationally, That it was not his own apprehension, nor theirs 'neither, that ought to decide the controversy.'-Monday, Jan. 22, after three bloody harangues at their fast Jan.21, on Gen.ix, 6; Matt. vii, 1; Psalm cxlix, 6, 7, (three texts as miserably tormented that day as his Majesty was the next,-these men always first being a torment to scripture, the great rule of right, and

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"Those that had been eight years endeavouring to murder the King in a war, are made his judges now that war is over. A pretty sight! to have seen Clement, Ravillac, Faux, Catesby, and Garnet, one day endeavouring to despatch a King, aud the next advanced to be his judges; after prayers and fasts, the great fore runners of mischief, whereby they endeavoured as impudently to engage God in the villainy he forbid, as they had done the people in a treason which they all abhorred,-for the remonstrance framed by Ireton for questioning the King, was called the Agreement of the People. When all the ministry of England, and indeed of the world, cried down the bloody design, contrary to oaths and laws and common reason, as the shame and disgrace of religion, these assassinates were satisfied with the preachments of one pulpit-buffoon Peters, a wretched fellow, that, since he was whipt by the governors of Cambridge when a youth, could not endure government ever after; and the revelations of a mad Hertfordshire woman concurring with the proceedings of the army, for which she was thanked by the House; her revelations being seasonable, and proceeding from an humble spirit.”

"Jan. 17, 1649. I heard the rebel Peters incite the rebel powers met in the painted chamber, to destroy his majesty; and saw that arch-traitor Bradshaw, who not long after condemned him." EVELYN's Diary.

then to all that lived according to it,)* they being perplexed with the King's demurrer to their unheard-of jurisdiction, resolved among themselves, after some debate, to maintain it as boldly.

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"Long were they troubled how they might assert their power, longer how they might execute it; some would have Majesty suffer like the basest of malefactors, and that in his robes of habiliments of state, that at once they might dispatch a king and monarchy together: Others' malice proposed other horrid violences to be offered to him, but not to be named among men ; till at last they thought they should gratify their ambition to triumph over monarchy sufficiently if they beheaded him; and so, waving all his pleas for himself and the allegations of mankind for him;-after several unworthy harangues, consisting of nothing else but bold affirmations of that power whereof they had no one ground but those affirmations and reflections on the King's demurrer, as a delay to their proceedings; when indeed he hastened them, by offering that towards the peace of the kingdomn in one hour that was not thought of in several years; notwithstanding his seasonable caution to them, That an hasty sentence once past, might be sooner repented of than recalled; conjuring them, as they loved the liberty of the people and the 'peace of the kingdom they so much pretended for, they would ' receive what he had to offer to both ;-the club of assassinates proceed to this horrid sentence: Whereas the Commons of England in Parliament have appointed them an High Court of Justice for the trying of Charles Stuart, King of England, be'fore whom he had been three times convented, and at first time a charge of high treason and other crimes and misdemeanours 'was read in the behalf of the kingdom of England,' &c. Here the clerk read the charge; which charge being read unto him as aforesaid, he, the said Charles Stuart, was required to give his answer, but he refused so to do, and so exprest the several passages at his trial in refusing to answer. For all which treasons ⚫ and crimes, this court doth adjudge, that the said Charles Stuart

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In the long catalogue of crimes alleged against Hugh Peters, (who was executed at Charing Cross, Oct. 16, 1660,) the following are enumerated: "On Sunday, the 21st of January 1649, he preached at Whitehall, from Psalm clix, 8, To bind their kings with chains,' &c., applying his text and sermon to the late King, and highly applauding the proceedings of the army, saying, This is a joyful day, and I hope to see such another day to-morrow. That the Sunday after his Majesty was sentenced to die, he preached again upon the same text at St. James's, saying, 'He intended to have preached upon another text before the poor wretch, but that the poor wretch refused to hear him.'-That in the afternoon of the same day he preached at Sepulchre's, and repeated all his parallel between his late Majesty and Barabbas, crying out, that none but Jews would let Barabbas go. That, in this sermon, he said, 'Those soldiers who assisted in this great work, had Emmanuel written on their bridles.'-That after the King was murdered, Peters said, Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation.'-That a while after the execution, he said, I rejoice to think of that day; for to me it seemed like the great and last day of judginent, when the saints shall judge the world.' "'

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' as a tyrant, traitor, murtherer and a public enemy, shall be put to death by the severing his head from his body. To which horrid sentence the whole pack stood up, by agreement among themselves before made; and, (though they agreed in nothing else, either before or since,) unanimously voted the bloody words, words of so loud a guilt, that they drowned all the earnest proposals of reason and religion, offered by a prince who was a great master of both. All the great throng that pitied but could not help afflicted majesty, (with whom they saw themselves drawn to the slaughter,) groaned upon the sentence, but with the peril of their lives; it being as fatal then for any persons to own respect or kindness to Majesty, as it was for the King to carry it; and as dangerous for others to be good subjects, as for him to be a good king.* They that were to force him out of his life, forced others out of their loyalty; endeavouring fondly to depose him from his subjects' hearts, as they had done from his throne. Much ado had the best of princes to gain the privilege of the worst malefactor: (1.) To see his children and relations for the satisfaction of his mind. Or (2.) his chaplain, Bishop Juxon, to settle his conscience: the latter of whom being permitted to come not till eight of the clock on Saturday night; the incomparable prince enjoying in the midst of tumults a calm serenity, being full of his own majesty, and having a greater power over his temper than his enemies had over his person, bespeaks him thus: 'My Lord, that you came no sooner, I believe, 'was not your fault; but now you are come, because these rogues 'pursue my blood, you and I must consult how I may best part with it. Indeed, all the while, he did all things becoming a christian obliged by his calling to suffer, not reflecting that he was a prince, (to whom such usages were unusual,) born to command. Since they could not keep the bishop from coming to him, they disturbed him both the next day, Jan. 28, in reading divine service, and preaching on Rom. ii, 29, and at other times at St. James's, with scoffs and unnecessary and petulant disputes, which he either answered irrefragably or neglected patiently; and at Whitehall with the noise of the workmen that prepared the scaffold; he being brought thither on purpose, Jan. 28, at night, to die often by every stroke of the axe upon the wood, before he should die, once for all, by one stroke of it upon himself. Neither do they only disturb, but, either out of fear or design, tempt him too with unworthy articles and conditions, which

"Remarkable here the difference between his Majesty's temper and the Parliament's: For that very liberty of opinion which they themselves asserted under the notion of Liberty of Conscience, they punished five of the Judges, that voted against their sentiments, severely: The King entertained with respect those two that voted against his judgment and interest too, the one dying with a character from his master of an upright man; and the other being dismissed upon his own earnest petition, with the honour of having been a good servant." LLOYD'S Worthies.

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