WHen you pass from your busie hours to those of your pri­vate unbending and easie re­treat, to the Debates of friendly Discourse from those of publick Affairs, in a complaisance which is so na­tural to you that business it self cannot ruf­ [...]e it, you often allow me a share in your Diversion; and at the same time in a good­ness which is so peculiar to you, that I worthless Man as I am can expect it from none besides, you are pleased to make my company a part of that Diversion, as you always make your own a great part of my [Page 2] satisfaction: And then the liberties of con­versation open to me the fairest and bright­est Scenes of Friendship, I am let into the whole secret of your Inclination and Aver­sion, I hear what part of the World is plea­sing, and what displeasing to you, I am admitted into all the wisdom of your Re­marks, and all the results of your Judg­ment, which are as useful upon things with­out doors as upon those within the House. You have more than once declared to me your high dissatisfaction upon your hearing of a late Sermon, and then I soon declared mine to you, that you who always go to Church with such a composed frame of mind should meet with any occasion there for your going away from thence in some disorder. You have now left the Town, and my self, with your other Friends, less happy there, and you only thus begin to make us so; nothing from you, but your absence, can be unpleasant to us: You have condemned us to the using all our art in the disagreeable experiment of living with­out you, not only that you may adjust the Affairs of your Family and Estate (wherein you condescend to that lower Exercise of your Wisdom, which here shews it self in higher things, moves and shines in a nobler Sphere) but with a prospect more enlarged, [Page 3] that you may serve your Country nearer home, and not, as here, by a distant Re­presentation. Since your quitting of the Town, the Sermon has sallied out from the Press, and, as when Forces do so from a besieged City, upon many Enemies. I at the same time tell you the thing with no little regret, because I am sure you have so much prudence your self, that the view of imprudence in others is, like that of strange and monstrous Evils, and which we have known nothing of before, a very unnatural and uneasie prospect to you; and then your generosity has always so much tenderness for the true interest of others, that, whenever any breach is made upon it, you cannot but be sensible of it, and often more than they are themselves. Of all Men, Sir, you would have the Clergy to be Wise, in your nice regard to their Persons, that they may be happy, and to their Office, that their per­formance therein may be successful; and therefore it is very much your desire, that in this Age there may still be reason for the remark of those, who observe that the Clergy of other Ages were, in our old En­glish Historians, often known by no other name than that of the Wise Men of the Kingdom: Indeed there was in those times a particular necessity of their being so, for [Page 4] the sake of the Nation, when they fil­led the great Offices of State and Judica­ture; but there is always a necessity that they should be Wise, for their own, and yet at the same time for the sake of the Nation too, and of the better part of it, the Church. Some Weeks since this Dis­course was publish'd, and I have but one reason to lessen my wonder at the publish­ing of it, the same thing which a Friend once told me in a Letter, wherein his mo­desty was unwilling to ask what my Friend­ship was ready to grant, That Paper cannot blush. When in the Reign of King Charles the Second a Book of scandal upon King James the First was reprinted, and the Bookseller was to answer the thing in a Court at Westminster, the King's Council, one who was afterwards Lord Chancellor, demanded of him in Court, Mr. M [...]. Mr. M [...]. What did you see in this Book to make you reprint it? He answered, I saw one very particular thing; That Sir Wa­ter Rawleigh was worry'd to death by the King's Council. I wish that the Divine had seen as little reason to print this Sermon as the Lawyer did to reprint that Book; and I am not willing to imagine that, as Sir Walter Rawleigh was said to be worried to Death by the King's Council, so others [Page 5] would transprose the Politick rage, and wor­ry the King himself, Charles the First, to a second Death.

Sorry I am that the Sermon it self should become a part of the Mortifications of the Day, and be so much a Penance to the Hearers of it: Especially, when the Hear­ers were such as you, and such as that Ho­nourable Assembly which you are so wor­thy a Member of, and make so great a Fi­gure in. It is not enough, Sir, to say that I am sorry, I must bring in some other and higher passion to profess my zealous resent­ments, that when you give us Laws for the securing of our Religion, and when we seem to love the Title of its being Estab­lish'd by those Laws, we should not give you better Fruits of this Religion in the Divinity presented to you, and that we should undermine the Religion by our Do­ctrines which you establish by your Coun­cils, and that there should be a new train of Gun-powder laid against you at Westmin­ster, and such as would blow up Kingdoms together, and Kingly Power. Our Indig­nation is to be our atonement, as when in the Jewish Law some heinous thing was [...]ommitted, the Elders of the City next to the scene of action were to declare in so­ [...]emn forms their having no part therein, [Page 6] and their abhorrence of it. Another sort of Divinity had been Preach'd at other times upon the same occasion, within those Walls which lately were defiled and profaned with the most unhallowed Errors, as the Walls of a Jewish House were with a Leprosie and a Plague; but these were afterwards cleansed by the Priest, those were polluted by one, and how much scarlet and hysop must there be, and no less then a whole forest of Cedar Wood, to take off the pol­lution. And here the Stone, as in the Prophet, might cry out of the Walls, and the Beam out of the Timber might answer it. One of high Rank in the Church (as well as many others before and after him) on the same Day, and in the same Place treated his Hearers otherwise, and from that Text, All Judah and Jerusalem mourned for Josiah; but some will scarce allow a Josiah to this Day, and scarce any Mourning either of Judah or Je­rusalem for the Death, but only for the Life, Can the Tomb give no security, as the Throne had not any? Must they who raise a general disorder in the whole. State of this World, and confound all things in Life, ranverse and confound too Death itself as well as other things, and make it no more like it self, no State of rest? Because truth is often laid up in reserve to be written of [Page 7] the worst Princes, when they are dead, must falshood be then spoken of the best? Shall the Purple be torn from the Shoulders, and the Head too cut off from thence, and then the Ashes, the sacred Ashes be disturb'd? Shall not only those of this Prince be insulted, but the Ashes too of so many Kings in the Neighbouring Monuments of Majesty laid low in the Dust? Must good Kings, when living, be safe from Libels, because then bad Subjects are not safe from Punishment? And must they not have that sort of Pre­rogative afterwards? In this sence the ma­xim of the Law should prevail, and the King should never dye. I who pretend not to po­liticks in any thing, and never admire them in a Sermon, would admire them less, such is they are, in this, which instead of fix­ing the bounds to Government should have fixt those to its own Enquiries, which cha­stises the Tyranny of Dominion with ano­ther lawless one of speaking, with a Mouth is arbitrary as that of an Eastern Prince, and as fierce upon Kings as the Bow-string of the Mahometan Emperor upon Subjects. There are some in the World, who by a strange impulse of a Politick enthusiasm seem to imagine themselves raised for extraordinary purposes, they are either to be Kings them­selves, or controlers of those who are so, [Page 8] designed, like the Lacedemonian Ephori, to correct the insolent excesses and haughty pride of Tyrants, but still with a greater insolence: And when they have given them­selves this great Office, they execute it so as if they would take away that of a King, with such a Spirit and such Conduct, as if in their opinion no less then in the original notion of the Greek Word, all Kings were Tyrants: At least all but a living King, whom they are sometimes very tender of and would not hurt for a World, till they have made him uncapable of hurting them, as some Slanderers, who commit all the ra­vage with their Tongues upon the absent Men, are tame and easie, and pour out all their smoothest Oyl upon the present. When Christ himself declared that his Kingdom was not of this World, one of his Servants, a Church-man, should not pretend to have any here, nor disturb those who have one in this World, as a Foreign Ambassador is not to be concerned in or embroil the Af­fairs of State in the strange Country he re­sides in. When the Preacher will become the grand Pentioner and Prime Minister, a neighbouring Government does right to it self in sending him a Present of Shooes, that he who went out of his way before, without order, may be sent to travel by [Page 9] command, and in his Travels may learn more Wit, as much as he thinks he has already, and more good Manners; or he may disturb other Countries, and not his own, which is not to be so much his own as to use such freedom with it. The same fault which we censure in the Clergy of another Church should not be seen upon those of ours, and of all Men they who profess a burning Zeal for the Protestant Religion are not to complement others of the contrary, to ease them of their Faults by taking them upon themselves. Indeed those of a Society in that Religion, most famous for mixing with Politicks, do yet confess their being obliged by the Rules of their Constitution not to do so; as Fisher the Jesuit declared to King James I. when pre­sent at the Conference betwixt him and Dr. White. But a false Flag is often hung out as well in Societies as in Ships, and there is too often a double Will, Signi, & Beneplaciti, where it should not be, as well as it is said to be where it is not; and some thing besides a Dream is to be ex­pounded by Contraries. Indeed the Jesuit's saying, like modern reports, had some need of being confirmed, and it had a confir­mation, such as it was, in the Reign of that very King to whom it was declared, [Page 10] from a Plot against him encouraged by one of that Society; as another had written a Book of the Succession, wherein the Rights of kings are overturned, and the Peace of Kingdoms is disturbed. The Rules urged by Fisher are these: 1. That there may be an abstaining from all appearance of Evil, and that we may prevent as much as may be all complaints rising from false suspi­cions, it is commanded to all of our So­ciety, by vertue of their holy Obedience, and under the Penalty of being uncapable of all Offices, Dignities or Preferments, that they presume not to make themselves any way concerned with the publick and secular Affairs of Princes, belonging to rea­son of State as they call it, nor to under­take the care of managing such political Matters, though required and asked. 2. All Preachers are commanded to forbear the reprehending of Princes and the great Men of the Commonwealth, and in their Ser­mons to recommend frequently and seriously to the People Obedience to Princes and Magistrates. 3. The Confessors of Princes are forbidden upon the occasion of their Office to mingle with matters of State and the Government of the Commonwealth. It would be no affront to you, as it has sometimes been to a Prince, to address to [Page 11] you in any other Language then that of your Country, and you are not afraid of Latin, as some Gentlemen are in this Age of Beauxs (not Esprits) who have the same reason for their dread of the Language, which Men often have for their fears of other things, that they do not understand it; Yet I have not given you the Rules in their Original, because I as little covet to appear learned, as others do to be so, and I would no more affect to be like a Pedant, then I would have a Preacher to be like a Statesman. Our Writing, in Letters, is to be like our speaking, in familiar Discourse, and this betwixt you and me is not wont to be in Latin, we love old England so well, and all things belonging to it, as to imagine that our ordinary Conversation upon English ground may be supported without a Language from the other side of the Water. I so much the more avoid the quoting of Latin now, because in another part of my Letter I cannot avoid it, and you will pardon me when there is necessity, be­cause I could not pardon my self, when there is none. How far these Rules have been observed by the Men of that Society, Hi­story will tell, and the World may judge; but whether they have been kept or no by them, I am sure they are to be observed [Page 12] by our selves; If they have not been ob­served by them, they should so much ra­ther be so by us, that our better Religion, as it has many other Proofs, may have this of a better conduct.

Could I have reached the least thought of being worthy, I should have coveted with all the ambition which the most eager Cour­tiers at any time can have, to attend the dying Martyr in those pious and cloudy Minutes, though I should have taken the same fate too on the same Scaffold with him, and so should have attended him in all the lowly homage of a dutiful Subject into the other World. I would have cho­sen rather to have been that good Church­man who performed the last Offices to him, then the same Bishop when he waited on him in all the Glories of the Court, in all the greatness of the King and mitred gran­deur of himself, when he had a Staff of State in one hand as well as a Crosier of the Church in the other, and he was Lord Treasurer of England as well as Lord Bishop of the chief City thereof: He was after­wards present at the King's Interment, that he might have the honour of seeming ne­ver to forsake him, and the satisfaction of seeming to be always near him, though in that melancholy and gloomy State. Much [Page 13] rather should I have chosen to have been that Church-man in all this mournful du­ty then to have been the greatest of those Preachers afterwards, who entertained the Parliament with such strange Discourses on several occasions, at the same place which this was pronounced in, St. Margarets West­minster. One of those had before at the Treaty at Uxbridge dared to say that sal­vage thing upon the Blood of others which I cannot dare to repeat without a dis­order in my own, that the Cause was worthy of their riding up to their Horses Bridles in Blood: And afterwards he, who was so prodigal of the Lives of others for the Cause, lost his own against it, and though I can­not profess to lament his death, yet I am sorry that he was Beheaded, for seeing the Enemies of this excellent Prince would in­flict that Death upon him, he gave a grace and luster to it, from that time it became an honourable form of dying, and it had too much glory for any of his Enemies to pretend to.

His Person was alas too much in the hands of the People; and this Sermon derives the Power of a King from their Choice, how­ever the Learned Knight who lived in the neighbouring Cloyster, Sir Robert Filmer, gave it an higher and nobler source. If any [Page 14] Estates be Hereditary, some Crowns are so too, if any Crowns, the English in its ordinary course; we are only sorry, that at this time in our present view it is not so much hereditary as we could wish it, in the number of its Heirs. Royal Power has another and a clearer Foun­tain in our Law and in our Constitution then in some Principles and Writings; and they who are so zealous to demand that others should preserve the Constitution, should not themselves be so partial as to break in upon it: They who are always fierce to confine a King in the exercise of his Government, within the Circle of the Law, (and sometimes within a Fairy Circle, such as they first imagin to be Law, then call it so) should of all Men be contented that the Power of the same Government should not rise from any thing but as the same Law determines. Some there are who bid defiance indeed to Monarchy, that is, to the overgrown Mon­ster, the hateful thing, in any hands but their own, and then none would more be Monarchs than themselves, for none should reign besides them, as well as none with so much fierceness, with such a rage of Power and lust of Empire, as these uni­versal Monarchs, these Sovereigns of the World. Least the welfare of the People should depend on the pleasure of the Prince, [Page 15] the Authority of the Prince must depend on the will of the good-natured People: And thus indeed every King as well as he of Macedon must have one Officer amongst the many in his Court, to cry every Morn­ing at his Chamber door with an awful noise, Remember thy self to be Mortal; all Princes would be so in their Life, and the worst way, by violence, and Mortal in their Power too, more frail than their Life, for that would first be lessened upon the pre­tence of its being limited, and then taken away upon the plea of its being secured, as Nurses often take away valuable things out of the hands of Children, upon the pretence of abundant caution, to lay them up in other hands more safe and careful, and of wonder­ful kindness, to keep them for their use. Then would Princes almost as little have a capacity of acting as the dead Northern King, when he lies all the time unburied till the night be­fore his Successors Coronation: The act of the Child would then have been a Manly one, and such as would have given him all the title to a Crown that wise Merit and a great Soul could give, when the Hebrew Boy in the Egyptian Court, not in pastime but anger, kickt a Crown with all the scornful Air, he had not so much of the childish fancy to be pleased with the shining metal and [Page 16] gaudy appearance, he would not vouch­safe to play with it: Then indeed not they who have the Crown would play with it (there would be little diversion in it) but they who envy it would make sport and kick and tread it under foot in all the re­proachful forms of a disloyal Contempt, and most undutiful defiance. It would be then per­haps a Favour, if only the Crowns of Kings should have such a Treatment, and not Kings themselves, like those of Joshua, whose Men of War put their Feet upon the necks of them, Five Kings were hid together in a Cave, (so cheap was Majesty, and lower far than the place which it retir'd to) they were afterwards Prisoners there, and great Stones were rolled upon the Mouth of the Cave, they at last were slain, and hanged on five Trees; And there were once Threescore and Ten Kings, who suffering a very odd and hu­mourous Punishment from a wanton and sporting Cruelty, had their Thumbs, and their great Toes cut off, and gathered Meat under the Table, like the most despised and the mea­nest Creatures. If a Crown were to be ta­ken on such uncertain and dangerous Condi­tions, as some have talked of, a wise Prince would only take it, and that he might have the Glory not of wearing, but of resigning it, as the King of Denmark, at his Corona­tion, [Page 17] takes off the Crown from his Head with his own Hand, and lays it down gent­ly on the royal Cushion, on something much more soft than itself. If there be one ex­tream in a passive, there must be another in a loose Obedience, and however the Liberty of the Subject is as much to be encouraged by all as it is desired by every Man, yet that must not be a Liberty of doing what he pleases, much less of doing so upon the King himself. It is abounded Liberty in his actions with his fellow Subjects, and surely then bounded too in those with his Sovereign: Indeed any o­ther would be only that Savage Freedom of living in Fields and Woods, of ranging without restraint, and seeking a Prey with­out controle, a brutish and wild and barba­rous Priviledge which humane Nature was contented long ago to renounce upon its first Consent to, and original Combination for Society and Government. Because Mankind are said to have been charmed by Musick into the quitting the Liberty of the Fields for the order of Societies, must there be a Sermon to sing and enchant them back again into their primitive State? The saying was very wise of an English King, that He would not, if he could, be Arbitrary, and he would not give him­self, if others would give him leave, to be so, [Page 18] because he loved to have a Rule to act by. Th [...] Lord to whom he spoke it at his Supper o [...] led this a golden Saying, and such as deser­ved to be publisht, like one of his Proclama­tions, to be known by every Subject, and profest by every King. And surely it is good breeding in a Subject not to challenge more than what a Sovereign pretends to, it must be his advantage to have a Compass and Li­mits for his Motions, and it would be his Ease to have fixt Measures for his Actions, as we are always more easie and secure in our work, if we have a certain Rule before us, to direct in the doing of it: Upon the complaint of an illegal action done by a Sub­ject, a Judge declared from the Bench, Thi [...] is Arbitrary Power, and such Power is a monster, which I knock down wherever I meet it. The Doctrine of the Ax for Sovereigns is not more Orthodox to me than the Doctrine of the Bowstring is for Subjects, and whoever is so unmoved and serene a Master of himsel [...] and has so much calmness as not to abhor the first, we may suppose, has conquered all Aversions, and attained this Perfection, such as it is, to abhor nothing in the World. When Subjects have learnt the Mystery of an arbitra­ry Power at their Peril, they impart the se­cret to their Prince, by an undesigned Con­veyance (as they who have learnt often teach [...] [Page 19] and Princes learn it, as we do many things, by the practice of it upon themselves, and by the same Methods of Experience, by which they who have taken much Physick themselves rise at last to the skill of prescribing it to others. If arbitrary Power be a pleasing draught to Subjects, the Cup may go round, as in the usual freedom of drinking, and their Kings may have a Curiosity and eager thirst to tast the high luscious Wine, and they may drink too deep, when once they have the Cup in their hands. Other Kings, besides one of Sicily, may force the Authors of Brazen Bulls to feel their own Invention, to try and perish by their own Art.

When they who raise the loudest Cry of liberty will scarce allow the asserting of O­bedience in a Sermon, however the Gospel speaks so much, and the Canons prescribe the preaching of it, I expected not to hear of the Liberty of the Subject in a Sermon: The Gospel which is the Standard of such Discourses speaks very little upon it (as upon other things meerly Civil) and yet ve­ry much indeed upon two other sorts of Li­berty, one from Sin, the other from the Mo­saick Yoke. The Rubrick of the Day com­mands preaching against Faction and Rebel­lion; but to some the Rubrick is a thing ve­ry inconsiderable, however it be Law, and the Law is that admired and mighty thing, which they profess so much to bow down and [Page 20] adore, when it gives a restraint to any Pow­er but their own. Obedience is indeed a Duty, but Liberty is a Priviledge of a Sub­ject, not a Duty of a Christian, and there­fore scarce the Business of a Sermon, which is to speak of Duties, to enforce and recom­mend them. Every English Man is made a Subject by the Law, as well as otherwise, and therefore when he performs the Duty of one he is then called Loyal or Legal, as a considerable Gentleman once told me who had no high Passion for Monarchy, and I never thought his not having it one of his Vertues or grand Accomplishments, however some think it one of their own. Every Man is no less made a Subject by Law, then some will have the King to be made so by it, when they quote that from Bracton, Legem per quam factus est Rex, By, that is, according to Law: So the Prince of every Country has a particu­lar extent of Power according to the Law of that Country, he may not have his Pow­er in general, but the particular Measures and Exercise of it, from the Laws, which may not be so much the Fountain as the Rule of his Authority. This saying of the Old learned Lawyer could not be intended against kingly Power, because his Principle was so much for it, when he pronounced those other Sayings; Rex non est sub homine, [Page 21] sed sub Deo. Non habet parem in regno suo, cum par in parem non habeat Imperium. Item nec multo fortius superiorem, nec potentiorem habere debet, quia tunc esset inferior sibi subjectis. Sufficit in poenam, quod Dominum expectet ultorem. Nemo praesumat de factis suis disputare, multo fortius contra factum suum venire. All these things we read in the same Eighth Chapter of the first Book in which he had said, Lex facit Regem, & Rex non est ubi dominatur vo­luntas & non lex. He who gives us these high Notions of Royal Authority, writ se­veral Hundred Years since, in the Reign of Henry the 3d. and not long after the Reign of King John who had so much lessen'd this Authority abroad, by the surrender of his Crown to the Pope, and not made it greater at home by his Concessions to the Barons. Amongst the several Punishments which the Law prescribes to Subjects, it prescribes not this to a King not the Punishment of Death, it never speaks of his Death, but when it pronounces the high Penalties against it, ne­ver names it but as the crime of the Subject, not as the Punishment of the King for his crimes. Indeed the Law forbids the very calculating of the Kings Nativity, and the foretelling of his Death, much more the be­ing active towards it: The Law is so nicely tender of the Life of a King, and, like one of [Page 22] his principal Guards, is so strictly watchful o­ver it, as not to bear the Thought of its being within view of Danger, and to abhor the trou­blesorne Notice of the naming of his Death; the Law will not allow the imagining of it, (a Phrase of the Statute Book) not so much as in a fanciful Prophecy, not in this softer Sence.

However the Cry of Liberty is not always seasonable, yet the thing is always desirable, and as much to me as to others, I love to hear of it every where but in a Sermon, and the sound of that name is Musick to me. But to speak so fiercely of it, as if the Barons were again at Runny Mead, and another Magna Charta were to be demanded, to talk so high of the Liberty, that is, the Power of the Subject, and so low of the Power of the Prince, and, when this is far below an Excess in the use thereof, to talk of Danger from so little Power (for to one part of Mankind no­thing is so dangerous and frightful as the least Authority in a King) and then to offer wise provisions against the threatning evil is not a making Court to any present King, and has something in it so little grateful, which may want all the sweetness of a Pane­gyrick to carry off at last the disagreeable rellish: It gives an harmless and unmeant wound which makes an healing Postscript needful, however this may not be, as often [Page 23] other Postscripts are, the principal design, but the former part is more the business of the thing, and the sense of the Man. To draw something in strange Colours and worse Features may be no Complement to the next Man sitting in view, as if he sat and were the Original to the ill-fashio­ned Picture. To harangue upon ill Government, and good Remedies against it, when the present Government is far from being like that which is described, is no less unseasonable than in warm and easie Weather to put on the thickest Cloths, and order the hottest Fires and all the other Cau­tions Relief against the Rigour and Disadvantages of Winter: It is no less unnatural then to propose vomiting, bleeding and purging, a long and un­pleasant Course of Physick to a Man of the most untainted Health, that he may be sick for fear of Sickness, and then die for fear of dying. I would be so tender of the least Misprision of Treason against the Memory of that Prince, of whom the 30th. of January carries all the black and guilty Remem­brances upon it, that I would scarce name the the word, Tyranny, upon this day; unless at the same time some Subjects were to be declared the Tyrants, those who could be very well contented to be such themselves, and by strange inhumane Methods would disable their King from being so, that is, from doing good as well as hurt to Man­kind, the Glory of the latter they reserve to them­selves alone. If the World be made a barren and wretched, a forlorn and melancholy wast, yet when they make it so, the whole Action, however all the dismal Marks of Misery and Ruine appear at first sight upon it, has a new and nobler turn from the [Page 24] Hand which does it, then it has all the graceful Airs, the making barren is a cultivating, and the defacing is a beautifying, and Destruction itself is improved into Reformation. Must all things in this sense too be made better by them? Indeed they pretend to make all things better in every sence; but scarce themselves, in the best. These are the generous and publick spirited Men, who profess so much not to consider a narrow and pri­vate advantage, but to be born for the good of the whole race of Men, and in the vast Ocean of the general Interest to sink their own; and yet we find at last, when the Mystery of words is to be explained, their own Party is to them the whole Race of Men, as if there were not one Man upon Earth, or there deserved not to be one, besides them. Some there are (and I hope only the few, to whom the Doctrines of this Discourse could be grateful) who would not have the Day observed; and I so far come in to them in this (and in nothing besides) that it may be observed no longer, if the publishing of such Doctrines only must be a part of the Observation. They who seem to be in love with the Word, Abolishing, in Kingship, in Epis­copacy, in Ceremonies, &c. would have the Day abolisht, and however their Sence and mine can­not easily be the same, I would be contented with its being doomed to be abolisht too, with its being lost for ever, in the Practice of it; that there might not be such a Day again with such an Action. I would he more then contented that the Day should be abolisht, in an Abhorrence of it, that it should no more have any glimmerings of Day-light, seeing once it shined upon this Work of Darkness; ac­cording [Page 25] to the Notion of that Sermon of a Prelate, which condemned this Day to a gloomy cell, in the melancholy flight of Job, Let the Day perish wherein the King was slain, and the night in which it was said, &c. Let that day be darkness, let not God regard it from above, neither let the light shine upon it, let the shadow of death stain it, let a cloud dwell upon it; As for that night let darkness seize it, let it not be joyned to the days of the year, let it not come into the number of the months, Lo, let that [...]ight be solitary, let no joyful voice come therein, Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark, let it look for light but have none, neither let it see the dawning of the day. But seeing this Day will be one among the three Hundred and odd, in the yearly returns of time, let there be a memory of the Action, which it is too much signalized by, that there may be an Atonement of it, and when some in the abun­dance of their good Nature would have no Anger to be continued amongst Men upon this occasion, there should be an appeasing of that of God. See­ing an act of Parliament says, Be it enacted that the day of this horrid Paricide be observed as a solemn Fast throughout the whole Kingdom for ever, I will not say, as if there were a Senate within my self, like the Army in the Trojan Horse, I will not pro­nounce by my own Legislative Solitary Authority, Be it enacted that the day which has been observed too long be observed no longer, and that the Action of the Day was no Paricide, and that I have so har­dy and unmoved a Courage that it is very far from appearing horrid to me. I would be perem­ptory against the proposing this, and unwilling to propose any other Law, when I remember the [Page 26] usage of that Country, where he who offe [...] new Law was to do so with a grave awful Orn [...] ­ment about his Neck, and if that were condem­ned, he was too, the Law and the Man were to dy together. Indeed I wish there were the same reason for a Law of Repeal, against the keeping of this horrid Paricide, as once there was for the having no Law to punish Paricide, because it was supposed that none could be guilty of it. When some desire a gentle forgetting of this day, that all angry things against one another may be forgotten by us, it may be my turn to desire that they them­selves would not continue something more and worse then anger against this injured Prince, and then in a present Compliance with their milder Counsels I seem to speak the softest thing, when I only call him an injured one. I must begin to advise as well as they, that they would not continue a Fierceness as sharp as the fatal Ax every Day in the Year, and shew it upon every occasion, that they would not make his Wounds to bleed anew, and our minds to bleed upon the remembrance of them, nor expose his bloody Robes to open view, as the Orator did those of the murtheted Emperor; and not, as he did, to move the Pity, but to raise the Hatred of the Spectators. Seeing they appear so concerned for the Rights and Priviledges of the Subject, let them not deny this to the Sovereign, that he may have this one airy Priviledge of Ver­tue, when absent, lost, and out of sight; then it is desired, bewailed, and esteemed by the relen­ting and at last good natured Survivours. What­ever wrong he suffers from some in their Reproa­ches against him, our Church does him right in its [Page 27] just Character of him, and of his Enemies: The Office for this mournful Occasion declares that The hands by which his Life was taken away were wicked, and the blood which was shed was innocent, and God's permitting of that Wickedness was an heavy Judgment, his enemies are there said to be violent, and blood thirsty Men, cruel Men and sons of Belial and barbarous Murtherers, he a martyred Sovereign and a blessed Martyr, and one who followed the steps of his blessed Master and Saviour, God's dear servant, and one of the best of Men, and one of God's Saints, and his Death precious in God's sight. (As his Life should have been in the sight of Men.) The act is said to be most foul, and not to be reflected on but with horror and astonishment, his Person sacred, the indig­nities barbarous, and his Memory to be ever blessed among us, (not, as now too often, reviled.) The Vertues of his Death were wonderful like those of his Life, they were such as he carried very high and for which he had too much exercise; and this Office recounts them, His Faith and Patience, Humility and Meekness, Mortification and Self-de­nial, Charity and constant perseverance to the end, his suffering like that of his Saviour, and then, accor­ding to the same Pattern, his praying for his Murthe­rers, from whom he suffered. And thus, as the Church here pronounces, in him shined forth through all that Cloud the Glories of God's Grace. This form of Prayer is a Law, an Act of Parliament, and as such, the Voice of the People, in Consort with that of the Prince, and I wish that there were in every thing such a Consort. It is the publick Judgment of all the People of England, whose name is so dear to some, and yet with less noise [Page 28] indeed, not less dear to others; the solemn Judg­ment of the whole Kingdom, in the Statute, and then its most solemn and avowed Declaration, in the use of the Prayers, and therefore it is not to renounce that Declaration afterwards by any other to the contrary. The Prayers are such as I have reci­ted; the Sermon is to be such as the Prayers, and to be in harmony with them, because they are both appointed upon one design, and the Preacher is obliged and supposed to have joyned before in the Prayers, and therefore is not in a sudden pique to quarrel with them afterwards, on the same ground and in the same Temple to set up Altar against Altar, one Doctrine against another; as sometimes in one Church and in one Day, there are different Worships, those of the Lutherans and Calvinists, Protestants, and Papists, in Germany. There is to be an Uniformity not only in the Pray­ers themselves, but no less betwixt them and the Sermon, not weeping and sighing in those, and no appearance of mourning in this; as in the same Face, by artful Management, there have been all the shews of Sorrow on the one side, and every thing unconcerned on the other. The Sermon is not to controle and give Laws to the Prayers, but to receive its Rules and Measures from them, be­cause they are spoken to God, and so should be more perfect than what is directed, as the other is, to Men, and because they are the work of a more perfect Judgment, that of the Church, the other of a less authentick one, that of a single Churchman. A late Bishop in the most lofty tran­sports of Devotion did as much consider the design of the Prayers, as if he had been concerned in the [Page 29] first compiling of them, he had the highest Notion of the Day, and of the Preachers Duty, who in his Sermon before a Son of the Royal Saint prayed thus for his own Soul, not that of the Dead. Let my Soul be placed hereafter at the lowest Footstool of that lofty Throne on which this gre [...]t and holy Soul has its shining and glorious Seat. The Prelate in all this Rapture did not imagine that his Allegiance was to be con­tinued, as many think Friendship will be, in the other World, nor that he was to kneel to his Prince hereafter, as he had done upon Earth when he performed Homage to him at the receiving of his Bishoprick; but only he supposed that there were different degrees of Reward to those as different of Piety, and therefore when his humble thought of his own Sanctity gave him too much reason to be satisfied with any less noble reward, at the same time his high Opinion of this Martyr's Piety allotted one to him of the highest rank, such as always Martyrdom is said to have, and that which was so Peculiar to it as to be called its Crown. You sat, Sir, in that Parliament, which had a true sense of the keeping of the Day, and of the Perfections of this Prince, and you were active in the Vote of that Parliament, which designed Seventy Thousand Pounds for the removing of the Body from Windsor to Westminster, and for a Funeral more worthy of him then the other at Windsor, that how­ever his Death had all the studied Aggravations of Disho­nour from the worst, his Funeral might have some marks of Honour from better Subjects, and that he might at last have a place among the greatest, who always deserved one with the best of our Kings. Such a place he should always have not only among the Tombs of Princes, but in the Thoughts of all Mankind; and here indeed not to be buried, but to live, and be immortal. You will be as ready, Sir, to believe as I am to declare, that there was no more Necessity for the Title, which this Discourse was publisht with, then there was for the publishing of it: An Anniversary Sermon for the Day. It seems to have been as little for the Day as the Forces were for Charles the first, which fought against him, and yet were said to be raised for King and Parliament. Was there indeed to be so much Disguise in the Title, when there was too little in that which follows, and which is too exposed and plain and open, as the Men in Masquerade have a covering to their Face, when every thing besides is freely seen? Were we to raise high our Expectations of all the florid Rhetorick [Page 30] in the Discou [...]e itself, when such Rhetorical Figures as Antiph [...]sis and Ironia meet us at the Entrance? Whatever Flowers of Rhetorick I find, I could have been very well contented if there had been no blooming or appearance of them, if, as there has been so much deliberation, there had b [...]n still and for ever a deliberating, if what was preached in Winter had not been printed in Summer, as some Hi­storians tell us of a strange cold Country, where the words, upon speaking, freeze presently in the Air, and are bound up all the Winter, and afterwards unthawed by the warmer Season they surprize their wondering Hearers with an amusing noise in the Spring. However a King of England (Henry the 3d.) took so much care of his do­mestick Clergy, those within his Court, and was concer­ned so particularly and minutely for them, even to their Hair, as an order the cutting it short in a grave formal writ directed to his Court-Barber, William de Perecate, yet the Clergy may easily be excused from making returns to that C [...]re in cu [...]ing short the hair of the King, every imagined Excrescence of over grown and luxuriant Power. If I must not live to see the day when there shall not be one Man living at the same time to speak a reproachful thing against this eminent Saint, yet I hope not to live to see that Day, when many shall not be ready, and those much bet­ter then my self, to defend him, that is, to do honour to themselves in their asserting his, and so to do right to them­selves in the Duty and the Glory of it. You heard, Sir, a Sermon much more Orthodox the former Year, and thus you took the Antidore before the Poyson, and I hope the Antidote will work at the distance of a Year before, and the Poyson will have no force a Year afterwards, as the Italian doses have, many Years. I have yet another Wish, that if, without asking any Man's leave, this day be observed next Year (as I hope it will, according to the words of its first enacting, For ever) you may then and for ever have no such Discourse; not, if you should sit never so long in Parlia­ment, as you have sat long already, you who are so well read in publick Cares, and learned in Business, and who can give the best account of your growing old, that is, in the service of your King and Country. Were I to prescribe particular Rules to those discourses, I would prescribe this alone, that they should be such as should give you satisfaction, who Represent many others not only in your Parliamentary Capacity; they would then be approved by all the better part of Mankind, and by [...]iser Judgments then that of Sir [...]