Here is a great charge that is upon him; it is great in itself, and great because it hath many great charges in it; serpens qui serpentem devorat, sit draco; his charge having digested many charges into it, becomes a monster of charges.

The main and great one is this: a plot and practice to alter and subvert the frame and fabric of this estate and commonwealth.

This is the great one, and it hath others in it that give it more weight. To this end.

1. He labours to infuse into the conscience of his majesty, the persuation of a power not bounding itself with laws, which king James, of famous memory, calls in his speech to the parliament, tyranny; yea, tyranny accompanied with perjury.

2. He endeavours to persuade the conscience of the subjects, that they are bound to obey commands illegal : yea, he damns them for not obeying them.

3. He robs the subjects of the property of their goods.

4. He brands them that will not lose this property with most scandalous speech and odious titles, to make them both hateful to prince and people; so to set a division between the head and the members, and between the members themselves.

5. To the same end, not much unlike to Faux and his fellows, he seeks to blow up parliaments and parliamentary powers.

These five, being duly viewed, will appear to be so many charges; and they make up altogether the great and main charge-a mischievous plot to alter and subvert the frame and government of this state and commonwealth.

And now, though you may be sure that Mr. Manwaring leaves us no property in our goods, yet that he hath an absolute property in this charge, audite ipsam belluam. Hear himself making up his own charge.

Here Mr. Rouse read several passages out of his

book, and then proceeded: You have heard his charge made up by his own words, and withal, I doubt not but you seem to hear the voice of that wicked one, quid dabitis? what will you give me, and I will betray this state, kingdom and commonwealth?

But there are two observations (I might add a third, which is like unto a three-fold cord which cannot easily be broken,) will draw the charge more violently upon him.

The first is of the time when this doctrine of destruction was set forth. It was preached in the heat of the loan, and of these imprisonments which accompanied the loan, and it was printed in the beginning of that term, which ended in a remittitur; so that you might guess there might be a double plot, both by law and conscience, to set on fire the flame and estate of this common wealth and one of these entailed foxes was Mr. Manwaring.

Another note may be taken of the time, that is, the unseasonableness of it; for this doctrine of the loan, in case of necessity, was the year after an assent in parliamet to four subsidies and three fifteenths, which might have served for a sufficient stopple for the doctor's mouth, to keep in his doctrine of necessity.

A second observation may be of the means by which he seeks to destroy the commonwealth: his means are divinity; yea, by his divinity he would destroy both king and kingdom.

1. The king-for can there be a greater mischief to a prince than to put the opinion of deity into his ears? For, if from his ears it should pass to his heart, it might be mortal: you know how Herod perished. Now this man gives a participation of divine omnipotence to kings; and though a part may seem to qualify, yet all doth seem again to fill up that qualification, and very dangerously, if we remember that God saith of himself: I am a jealous God.

2. He goes about to destroy the kingdom and com.

monwealth by his divinity; but do we ever find in scrip. ture such a divinity? Surely I find there that God is a God of order, and not of confusion, and that the Son of God came to save, and not to destroy; by which it seems he hath not his divinity from God, nor from the Son of God. But from the seriptures, I find there is one in hell called the destroyer; and that we may know he went to hell for his divinity, he names sundry jesuits and friars with whom he consulted and traded for his divinity; but, not to bely even hell itself, the jesuits are honester than he, and if he had not brought more hell unto them than he found in them, he had never found this divinity which he hath brought forth: yea, in his quotations he hath used those shifts and falsehoods, for which boys are whipt in schools; and yet by them he thinks to carry the cause of a kingdom,

But, for a conclusion, to give the true character of this man, whom I never saw, I will shew it you by one whom I know to be contrary to him. Samuel we all know to be a true prophet; now we read of Samuel, that he writ the law of the kingdom in a book, and laid if up before the Lord; and this he did, as one of Mr. Manwaring's own authors affirms, that the king may know what to command, and the people what to obey. But Mr. Manwaring, finding the law of this kingdom written in books, tears it in pieces, and that in the presence of the Lord, in a pulpit, that the king may not know what to command, nor the people what to obey.

Thus Mr. Manwaring, being contrary to a true prophet, must needs be a false one; and the judgment of a false prophet belongs to him.

I have shewed you an evil tree, that bringeth forth evil fruit; and now it rests with you to determine whether the following sentence shall follow: Cut it down, and cast it into the fire!

SIR JOHN ELLIOTT.

The following is a noble instance of parliamentary eloquence; for the strength and closeness of the reasoning, for the clearness of the detail, for the earnestness of the stile, it is admirable: it in some places reminds one strongly of the clear, plain, convincing, irresistible appeals to Demosthenes to his hearers. There is no affectation of wit, no studied ornament, no display of fancied superiority; his whole heart and soul are in his subject, he is full of it; his mind seems as it were to surround and penetrate every part of it; nothing diverts him from his purpose, or interrupts the course of his reasoning for a moment. The force and connection of his ideas give vehemence to his expressions, and he convinces others, because he is thoroughly impressed with the truth of his own opinions. A certain political writer of the present day might be supposed to have borrowed his dogged stile from this speaker.

Mr. Speaker,

We sit here as the great council of the king, and in that capacity, it is our duty to take into consideration the state and affairs of the kingdom; and, when there is occasion, to give a true representation of them by way of counsel and advice, with what we conceive necessary or expedient for them.

In this consideration I confess many a sad thought hath affrighted me, and that not only in respect of our dangers from abroad, which yet I know are great, as they have been often prest and dilated to us; but in respect of our disorders here at home, which do inforce those dangers, and by which they are occasioned; for I believe I shall make it clear unto you, that both at first, the cause of these dangers were our disorders, and our disorders now are yet our greatest dangers; and not so much the potency of our enemies, as the weakness of VOL. I.

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ourselves does threaten us: and that saying of the father may be assumed by us, non tam potentia sua quam negligentia nostra. Our want of true devotion to hea ven, our insincerity and doubling in religion, our want of councils, our precipitate actions, the insufficiency or unfaithfulness of our generals abroad, the ignorance or corruptions of our ministers at home, the impoverishing of the sovereign, the oppression and depression of the subject, the exhausting of our treasures, the waste of our provisions, consumption of our ships, destruction of our men, these make the advantage to our enemies, not the reputation of their arms; and if in these there be not reformation, we need no foes abroad; time itself will ruin us.

To shew this more fully, I believe you will all hold it necessary, that they seem not an aspersion on the state, or imputation on the government, as I have known such motions misinterpreted; but far is this from me to propose, who have none but clear thoughts of the excellency of the king, nor can have other ends but the advancement of his majesty's glory. I shall desire a little of your patience extraordinary to open the particulars, which I shall do with what brevity Í may, answerable to the importance of the cause and the necessity now upon us; yet with such respect and observation to the time, as I hope it shall not be thought troublesome.

I

For the first, then, our insincerity and doubling in religion is the greatest and most dangerous disorder of all others; this hath never been unpunished, and of this we have many strong examples of all states and in all times, to awe us. What testimony doth it want? Will you have authority of books? Look on the collections of the committee for religion; there is too clear an evidence. See then the commission procured for composition with the papists of the north: mark the proceedings thereupon, and you will find them to little less amounting than a toleration in effect; the slight payments, and the easiness in them, will likewise shew the favour that is in