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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 villany, 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, aud 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 villany, the perfidiousness and cruelty of these men, and will deliver them over convicted to all posterity." O 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 cold. 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.

A

DEFENCE

OF THE

PEOPLE OF ENGLAND.

I PERSUADE myself, Salmasius, that you being a vain flashy man, are not a little proud of being the king of Great Britain's defender, who himself was styled the "defender of the faith." For my part, I think you deserve your titles both alike; for the king defended the faith, and you have defended him so, that betwixt you, you have spoiled both your causes: which I shall make appear throughout the whole ensuing discourse, and particularly in this very chapter. You told us in the 12th page of your preface, that so good and so just a cause ought not to be embellished with any flourishes of rhetoric; that the king needed no other defence, than by a bare narrative of his story:" and yet in your first chapter, in which you had promised us that bare narrative, you neither tell the story right, nor do you abstain from making use of all the skill you have in rhetoric to set it off. So that, if we must take your own judgment, we must believe the king's cause to be neither good nor just. But by the way, I would advise you not to have so good an opinion of yourself (for nobody has so of you) as to imagine that you are able to speak well upon any subject, who can neither play the part of an orator, nor an historian, nor express yourself in a style that would not be ridiculous even in a lawyer; but like a mountebank's juggler, with big swelling words in your preface, you

raised our expectation, as if some mighty matter were to ensue in which your design was not so much to introduce a true narrative of the king's story, as to make your own empty intended flourishes go off the better. For "being now about to give us an account of the matter of fact, you find yourself encompassed and affrighted with so many monsters of novelty, that you are at a loss what to say first, what next, and what last of all." I will tell you what the matter is with you. In the first place, you find yourself affrighted and astonished at your own monstrous lies, and then you find that empty head of yours not encompassed, but carried round with so many trifles and fooleries, that you not only now do not, but never did know what was fit to be spoken, and in what method. Among the many difficulties, that you find in expressing the heinousness of so incredible a piece of impiety, this one offers itself, you say, which is easily said, and must often be repeated; to wit," that the sun itself never beheld a more outrageous action." But by your good leave, Sir, the sun has beheld many things, that blind Bernard never saw. But we are content you should mention the sun over and over. And it will be a piece of prudence in you so to do. For though our wickedness does not require it, the coldness of the defence that you are making, does. "The original of kings," you say, "is as ancient as that of the sun." May the gods and goddesses, Damasippus, bless thee with an everlasting solstice; that thou mayest always be warm, thou that canst not stir a foot without the sun. Perhaps you would avoid the imputation of being called a doctor Umbraticus. But alas! you are in perfect darkness, that make no difference betwixt a paternal power, and a regal and that when you had called kings fathers of their country, could fancy that with that metaphor

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