.
.
Intro
Under Construction
.
Anthony Ascham (c. 1614 – 1650).
The section below is the second half of The Bounds & Bonds of Public Obedience, or a Vindication of our Lawful Submission to the Present Government, or to a Government Supposed Unlawful, but Commanding Lawful Things; Likewise how such an Obedience is Consistent with our Solemn League & Covenant… (London: Wright, 1649), pp. 38-66.
The outline and subheadings below have been added.
.
.
That this Obedience to the Present Government is not Contrary to, but Consistent with our Solemn League & Covenant
.
.
Outline
Intro
Thesis
Lawfulness of Promissory Oaths
All Promissory Oaths: Conditional
State of the Question
People’s Subordinate Role & Responsibility
SL&C’s Breaking by the Scots, its Expiring & Change of English Government
Sacred Covenants may Expire
SL&C was Not a Law
Ought to Fulfill an Oath to Own Hurt?
Applying the SL&C
Original Union & Circumstances of the SL&C
Covenant Breakers & the Original Enemy
Our Utmost Endeavors, “All the Days of our Lives” & Forever
SL&C Stands or Falls as a Whole
SL&C does not Prohibit another Civil Government
Presbytery vs. Royalty
Eternal Covenant’s Infinite Matter & Application
Henderson’s View
English, Independent Perspective
Title vs. Power
King & SL&C
Scotch Interpretation of SL&C
Conclusion
Conclusion to Whole Book
.
Intro
By these steps we are come at last ad sacras columnas, “to those sacred pillars” on which the holy [Solemn League and] Covenant [1643] hangs almost in every church as a sanctum aeternitati, a law “sacred to eternity”. The hands which hung it there have not (they say) power to take it down again. Who therefore may undertake to tell these persons that they actually are, or else may be, freed from it, seeing they find themselves obliged if they can to tie all the world with them in the same sort of knot?
Here is certainly a zeal worthy to be fixed on that which should oblige always; and the world must confess that there has been no public oath taken by any persons anywhere who have been more scrupulously attentive not to double with their God in relation to his part in [the] contract.
.
Thesis
But yet let not these consciences be scandalized if I say it was compiled by none but mortal men, taken only by such, and as a promissory oath cannot possibly be free from those exceptions and accidents wherewith time changes the constitution of all those things which it does not absolutely destroy. Wherefore upon a sober review of all, I doubt not but as many oaths and leagues are transient, so to show that this according to its nature and as it is originally a league or covenant, that is, as it is a formal compact relating to the public and united corporation of several nations and magistracies (by which each people were united together and without which neither people were respectively to act anything separately within and against themselves):
I say I doubt not but to show that such a covenant upon what has intervened is expired to us the people of England and that without any default of ours; and though our magistrate would give it a new life and obligation, yet to many principal things it can oblige no longer; and for the next we are to consider that though something of our first end in reformation stream through the Covenant, yet its spring-head rises higher than it, which end we are in all forms to pursue still and are now left tied to so much of the Covenant only as we were obliged to for all our days with all our mights and souls before we took it at all.
Lastly, if it were granted that the Covenant is not expired, yet I shall here show that our submission to this present government is no way inconsistent with it.
In which few words, though I have stated the main of its difficulties, yet ere I apply myself to answer objections I shall briefly premise what I have observed others have omitted, it being hard to find how we may be untied from a thing till we have found how the knot at first was made.
.
The Lawfulness of Promissory Oaths
Whatsoever we can say, affirm or deny, is either assertory or promissory. The first relates to the time past or present (as if I affirm Titius to be or have been at Rome), and therefore upon the very saying or swearing [of this], the whole truth and obligation is fulfilled and passed with the time which accompanied it. The other relates to the time present, as it is then sincerely said or sworn, and to the future for the sincere fulfilling [of] them, which yet is dubious, conditional and not in our powers, as when Titius promises Sempronius when his ship returns.
For this reason some [such as most Anabaptists] say all promissory oaths are absolutely unlawful, because oaths must be true and certain, but all future effects of things are uncertain. I answer:
That for so much as concerns the form of my oath here, it is true and certain: that my mind and words went truly together in the act of swearing and that I will make my deed and words go truly together when the supposed condition betwixt us (and which, as we mutually consent to [it], is in neither of our powers at present) shall absolutely come to pass.
This was the case of Abram’s servant when he swore to take a wife for Isaac (Gen. 24): a future (in several circumstances) very uncertain, both in respect of what might happen to the servant, to Isaac and to the virgin. We know what happened to Job’s children and family through the accident of war and the malice of the Devil, and how Joseph was shuffled away by his own friends and kindred.
All Promissory Oaths are Conditional
It is not enough to say such supposed tacit conditions cannot be in oaths, for:
First, if such conditions be in promises, and that I may lawfully make a promise to another, then I may lawfully swear a promissory oath to him which we see cannot be separated from such conditions as are not, cannot and need not be expressed betwixt us at the beginning.
For (to take away the supposition of fraud betwixt us) we both agree in this that we cannot foresee with what circumstances our futures may be perplexed. Therefore it is sufficient that we swore things not necessary, but possible, such as might happen or not happen, because [they are] depending on things which depend not totally on us, nor on our will, but rather mixedly on the wills of others and on that which to us is change or fortune, for which reason he is not forsworn who effects not always what he by oath promises, no more than he sins who always effects not his simple promise.¹
¹ [Note that the contraries of these propositions are absurd.]
Secondly, this tacit condition in a promissory oath and in things naturally and morally possible is proved by the very nature and definition of the oath:
For it is only an attestation and imprecation of God in such manner, that if the promiser fail, he would have him to whom he promised understand that he puts himself under God’s severe wrath. From hence it is to be noted that the bare promise obliged as strictly before he swore as after he swore;¹ and the reason is:
¹ [To fundamentally deny this is to enter the domain of Popish views on evangelical counsels and supererogatory works, that we can do works higher than what God’s law binds to.]
Because he was obliged by nothing but by that which was in pact. The investing it with an oath, or with God’s punishment, relates only to the penalty: so that a promissory oath signifies no more than such a penalty upon such a promise. But a penalty (as we know) in law and equity relates only to that which is unlawful, such as is the violation of a pact.
The addition of never so many penalties, to a thing in itself unlawful, can never fasten any obligation on me to do it. Nor can several penalties [bind] to an obligation in itself lawful, add anything to the first jus or right of it, but only to my future fear, lest I do injustice.
The capital question therefore in these cases will be: What the nature of the things are to which we obliged ourselves at first? For according as they stand or fall, our relations or obligations to them stand or fall, whether we will or no.
Thirdly, we find such tacit conditions concealed and supposed in the oaths of Solomon to Bathsheba (1 Kn. 2:20-24), of David concerning Nabal’s house (1 Sam. 25:22), of God concerning the destruction of Ninevah (Jon. 3:10) and of Abram’s servant concerning Isaac’s wife (Gen. 24:2-4), etc.
State of the Question
By a reflection on all this, viz. that seeing there may be a promise, and consequently a promissory oath, and that the nature and obligation of a promise and of such an oath is one and the same, we have gained a great point: that the Covenant (which is a promissory oath) is not in its own nature of an eternal obligation, but is involved in tacit conditions and accidents of the world which may justly incumber us from effecting it or from being further obliged to it, as well as other promises may which yet are made bona fide [by good faith] at the beginning.
The difficulty only is to see whether de facto [in point of fact] that has intervened which has now taken away the formal and original obligation which we of the people had to it at first by authority of our magistrate, and so taken away as we may be secure and out of fear of the penalty which we then submitted to in it.
.
The People’s Subordinate Role & Responsibility
I shall not here make use of what others [against the SL&C altogether] have laboriously argued, that the matter of the Covenant is such as we cannot be obliged to, but let it be as good or as bad as men please to suppose: I say in the first place that all the good or bad was formed into a political oath, authorized upon two kingdoms, by the sanction of two public magistracies, who as collaterals obliged themselves to cooperate faithfully together and obliged those of their distinct nations to cooperate respectively and subordinately with them for attaining a former end in such a way of reformation as is therein expressed, but by such means as they in their public and respective capacities, not we in our particular’s, should judge most consonant to equity and true to religion, for which reason we happily are pointed at there only in our private places and callings.¹
¹ [SL&C, point 1: “That we shall… endeavor, in our several places and callings…” See also point 6 to the same effect.]
Here therefore there is a relation of several things concurrent, viz. of two magistracies united as a means for the easier reaching the end of those respective reformations which they were obliged to make before they entered in league, and of two people who, by the union of their respective magistracies, pass (for so much as is therein expressed) into an union one with another and are to have their private capacities and endeavors managed by them and never against them by any virtue of this league.
Besides it is a considerable circumstance in the magistrates’ managing the whole that states or civil constitutions, by reason of the diseases of ambition and avarice, are naturally as much subject to future changes as any other things are; and without the supposition of tacit conditions, we may as little swear to preserve the state of a public body as we may swear to preserve the state of our own particular bodies, or as a parent may to preserve his child, which, when it shall be taken away by diseases or by justice, he may be sorry for the loss, but may not justly complain of it.
.
The Breaking of the SL&C by the Scots & its Expiring, including
by the Change of the English Government
And indeed so it is come to pass without any default in us of the English people or of our public magistrate (under whom we were to act in these private places and callings) that neither of us can be said to have laid the Covenant aside, although we could not keep it from expiring, because the failing was in that which was never supposed to be in our powers, viz. in many conditional things which came cross and in the breach of fidelity in another collateral and concurring power [i.e. Scotland].
If you please to object here as an aggravation and an incitement for us of the Covenanted people to rise kill and slay, that the Covenant is buried not as a thing really expired and dead, but that the people out of interest must be told so, only because the former magistracy is really laid aside and changed [by Cromwell’s regime], which if people should thoroughly consider would quickly make them find matter enough in the Covenant to take arms.
I shall not in the way of answer to this repeat anything concerning the cause, the means and the concurrences to this our present change; every covenanter both of England and Scotland knowing well that there was no change of government here till the Covenant was nationally broke (and so many here were ensnared, both royalists and parliamentarians) by the Scots, who thought to have used it for a change of government and as a stratagem to give law in another judicatory.
Neither shall I argue in this place how compatible any change may be with a covenant so conditional in which kings as parties are totally excluded from judging either for themselves or for others, which point shall be further argued at last; but I shall content myself to take what is here granted in the objection, viz. that the government is really changed [by Cromwell’s regime].
The consequence then to us of the people will be that, seeing by the fourth article of the Covenant we may not without apparent breach of it act the sense of the Covenant but as we receive it from our respective and supreme judicatory of England only, and that the said government which it relates to is confessed to be gone, have you not then clearly confessed that the obligation to act anything publicly by Covenant is likewise gone? according to an old axiom, Sublato relato tollitur correlatum [“By the relative being removed, the correlative is taken away”].
If this present government which we are changed to, and which now protects us, should think fit by the way of Covenant to give a new life to that remaining part of it which may be observed, yet you [who deny that Cromwell’s regime is legitimate] will not allow any obedience to them, though in things never so lawful. Neither will that fourth article allow me to obey any foreigner, nor those without whose consent the Covenant was made, and consequently without whom it is to be interpreted, as the late proceedings of the Scots at the Hague plainly show.
So that after all this, if I in my private capacity be as you say still indispensably obliged by it to begin or assist to public troubles [rather than to submit to Cromwell’s government], do you not fall into a worse absurdity and maintain an oath against the Fifth Commandment or against all magistracy, which is an impossibility? Nothing ever cautioned in terms more expressly for our duty of making discoveries of bringing to condign punishment of our supreme respective judicatories and the like than the Covenant did, which are things relating to none but our supreme magistracy, unless you please plainly to assert another absurdity, that every single man who has taken it is thereby absolved from his magistrate and is made one [magistrate] himself to judge of the other, and thereby authorized, not by way of toleration to profess, but to establish what religion he would, to punish at his own tribunal whom he would and to reform the state as he would. For he to whom you will allow a capacity of making war has also a capacity of making peace and laws for the security of his peace.
Thus we see how the government is changed and the formal obligation of the Covenant at an end. But what if I should grant you by the way of supposition that in case both the Covenant and the former government were standing together in as full force as you desire, and as it was when the Scots first delivered the king up to the parliament of England [in 1647]? I would then know of you whether if our parliament had then, for reasons best known to themselves (and of which we can never judge competently), declared us of the people free from any further obligation of the Covenant, might we justly have thought our Solemn League at an end and that we ought to act nothing publicly any longer by it?
If you will say we should have been still obliged to act upon it, then I ask you again under whom? For I have proved it must be always under a magistrate and you have all along proved that it must only be under our lawful magistrate, how lawful soever the thing be in itself which is commanded, you would not allow the king to be the person to be obeyed, whom you thought fit to keep in an imprisonment. The parliament (according to our supposition) would not be any longer obliged to it or [to] be obeyed in it, and the Scots acknowledge themselves in the fourth article to be the supreme judicatory only of Scotland; and I cannot act publicly by a private capacity or magistracy. Therefore in such a case, the Covenant how good soever, had not obliged any longer, nor is it in itself eternal.
.
Sacred Covenants may Expire
You will not deny perhaps but one man may free another from an oath when it is for the worldly profit of him who pleases to release it, as every man may throw away anything of his own right; but you will not allow it in sacred things where God is a party. I answer:
[Firstly,] that though no parent can dispense his wife or child from the fear of God and the duties they owe to him, yet He allowed him to break the child’s vow for giving Him a sacrifice, and both to be guiltless [Num. 30]; and then why may not we be now absolved, if our public parent judges it not fit that we should be any longer tied formally to a conditional oath, though it have relation to some sacred things?
You will say, “No, because the parent did not as a party solemnly concur to the child’s vow, and having never consented, he might the better dissent. But our public parent did concur as a party to our oath. The parliament and people took the Covenant jointly together, and it is said that if the father hear the vows and contradicts them not in the same day, then he confirms them and cannot break them without iniquity. To this I reply:
First, that it is said the child is free after the dissent of the parent (v. 5), and that the parent is charged with whatsoever was amiss in him, which is excuse enough for us of the people.
Secondly, the difference is great in a main point of the parallel, because [the verses speak to] after the concurrence of the father to the child’s vow for sacrificing something to God that might be completed in the temple without his further helping it on. But we cannot do anything in our case [regarding the SL&C] without the cooperation of our public parent all along; neither can he do anything without the concurrences of many other [things] possible, [being] but uncertain conditions; and if he in effect find those conditions have come contrary to his public endeavors, what may we do? Will it be enough for us to rest in having attempted the utmost of our private endeavors with him? Or will you authorize every man upon private judgment or interpretation to begin a war in his own sense?
A league or pact authorized betwixt private neighbors over a whole nation or over part of it is not as a league betwixt prince and prince: because these [latter leagues] have conditions expressed how and when to begin war upon one another in case their leagues be broken. But there is no such thing expressed in terminis [in the terms] in that Covenant which we have made one with another and which we made subordinately to our magistrate: so that if we or the magistrate fail, we are equally left to God’s justice solely and to the forfeiture of our own penalties due to Him; and everyone is to answer for his own deficiency in his own station:
And being left to ourselves again, we are left to act only so much of our oath or of the ancient end of it as we were bound to before we swore: which is a great deal, because we were bound by precept before we were by promise all the days of our lives to do our utmost for the glory of God and the good of our neighbor.
The SL&C was not a Law
Secondly, princes or States who by the supremacy of their powers are able to make laws for their separated kingdoms, when they unite their supreme powers, they are able to make a common law for all their kingdoms together, which is called a league or compact. But a law when it comes to be broken (which is a public thing and therefore of every man’s interest) may be vindicated publicly by war and by those who have a posse regni [capacity to rule]. But I cannot say the same may be done for the Covenant, for quo jure [by which law] can it be done?
The Scots, indeed, by one way of arguing make it greater than a law, and by another [way] make it less: which is when they one while affirm it unalterable and unreformable as a divine text, and another while confess it was not made by the joint concurrence of all those who with them are essential to the making [of] a public law.
I conceive we may safely say it is of a constitution inferior to that of a law, and therefore its obligation is less, though its penalty be greater to the failers in it. It was made use of only as a convenient instrument or means for the better attaining [of] some laws as its end.
A law it was not because it was not made by all the then legislative powers of the kingdom. For the king’s concurrence in England, if not in Scotland, was then held requisite for passing a law and he ever dissented from this Covenant.¹ Half the inferior sort of the people have not any interest in it, nor have taken it: and not having any obligation to it, how I pray you can they justly be drawn into the penalty due to it? as they must all be if a war (which is effectually a penal thing) be begun though by a part of the nation: for the nature of war is such that it puts a whole kingdom into imminent danger of desolation, though but begun in a part and by a party of it.
¹ [Rutherford argued in Lex Rex that parliament alone could make an oath or covenant with the people apart from the king’s consent, by natural law and Scriptural example, but this does not adequately bring the king and the rest of the people that refuse it from the beginning into the covenant, especially in civil war.]
Thus far I have endeavored to show the true fast and loose of all promissory oaths, and how their obligations cease according to the nature of the things which they are affixed to.
.
One Ought to Fulfill an Oath to his own Hurt
The author of the Grand Case of Conscience (p. 1) objects that if inconvenience may break a promise or disengage an oath, then many may be cheated and David was much mistaken: Ps. 15:4, ‘Who saith he shall dwell in God’s Tabernacle, who sweareth to his own hindrance and changeth not.’ I answer:
David speaks here of an oath violated by a change only in the promiser, who by his oath has passed a right to another and therefore can no longer dispose of it again. The party to whom he swore may dispose of it as he pleases and may dispense him of it, because no man has a right to make another man keep his own longer than he please himself. It is a duty to pay a debt, but not to receive it.
Finally, this is nothing to those cases where the change is not in us, but in other persons and in things which relate principally and conjointly to the fulfilling of the oath or promise. For if I promise Titius a sword at such a time, and he then chance to be mad [insane] (an accident not expressed betwixt us at first): Am I bound to put it into his hands in this change because I was the first promiser?
Whereas it is said that the obligation of some things end because they can be no longer kept, as that of the king’s person, etc., he answers (p. 11) that if men shall by violence put an end to the thing that thereby the obligation may end too, that is a breach of Covenant. A woman promises to be faithful to her husband so long as he lives; but if she, to marry another, kills him, she breaks her promise.
I grant it easily that they who use violence to break lawful contracts, sin grievously; which is a thing now confessed in every Church of Scotland; but what is that to those who use no violence to break them at all, nor can help it when it is done although many be undone by it? One thing I most earnestly desire to learn in this question propounded (I guess) concerning the king’s death [in 1649]; which was a consequence of the others’ breach and tamperings.
If by the Covenant we were indispensably obliged to preserve his person, how came it to pass that we were obliged by the same Covenant to wage war against him? I have heard of a distinction betwixt his power and his person, but never of any betwixt his person and himself. So that if the Covenant could have dispensed any soldier of England or Scotland to kill his person by an accident of war (as his life was oft in danger before he came to the scaffold) his death had been violent, and the obligation to preserve him had ended, and yet according to this argument the Covenant had not been broken. Why then should these men think the world so dull as not to understand plainly enough that the Covenant provided for his death more ways than one? True it is, that the Covenant held out a faint and a conditional preservation of him, and after all no man can sincerely stretch it further: From whence if we will let him judge this one controversy, he has left it recorded to posterity, in his supposed book, ch. 9, ‘In vain is my person excepted by a parenthesis of words, when so many hands are armed against me with swords.’ Moreover in his chapter of the Covenant, he feared it provided for him in a logic too loose and circumstantial. From all which what did he conclude, but that he would not allow of a Covenant-argument for his life?
I know the answer here is obvious, that bullets were not shot directly against him (as few are against any in a town or in a battle) and that if he would have withdrawn his person, he should have been out of danger; but then I pray you what advantage had he in this by Covenant, more than any common soldier of either side? who when they retire, are equally out of danger; Nay he had less advantage, for by preserving him, they meant keeping him after he was rescued from others, and by keeping him they meant not him primarily, but something else, to which all consideration of him was to give way.
As for others which were to be brought to punishment, they had some of them leave to go beyond the seas, others to enjoy liberties at home; and of all the excepted persons, there was never any of them who was here deprived of life, but as our troubles and wars increased, their number (which was strange) lessened even to six or seven at last, and most of those out of the kingdom. I know they have distinctions wherefore so much might be remitted to those and not to the king, although he had on his behalf the word ‘preservation’ in the Covenant, but these distinctions are but their strong justifications for that which is the bottom of this argument, if all Covenanters durst speak plainly alike.
Applying the SL&C
He objects (p. 11) that if according to Covenant we should preserve the privileges of parliament against a malignant party that would have taken away but five members, why not against a heretical party which took away above two hundred [such as in Pride’s Purge]? I answer:
That when the five members were in danger, there was a session of near all the Lords and of all the Commons to authorize the people to bring others before them to condign punishment. But where is there now any session of a supreme power in this land before whom we ought to bring the present parliament? Under what formal supreme magistracy can we now cooperate or receive public orders but from them? who have commanded no such thing against themselves. Lastly, the Covenant makes not us private men magistrates, neither does it authorize us to a war desertly, as to a penalty.
Certainly he does not mean that the remaining members make no House, because there are more now kept out than are admitted into it. For would not such an argument clearly determine that the House of Lords was never a House, since the major part followed the king under pretense that they durst not sit any longer at Westminster? Or else if the sitting of so many members as are enough for a legal vote be illegal after others are forced away, how shall we justify that session with a new speaker when the rest were forced to the army’s protection from the citizens, servants and apprentices who forced them and endangered their lives in the House? Or how shall we justify the House of Commons for sitting when the five members durst not appear? Though force should not be used without a desperate occasion be given (in which case the preservation of the substance is always above the consideration of a formality, as has been argued by the parliament ever since their first wars, yet [that] they know few or many sitters in the House is not a thing of our examination if they be above forty.
The Original Union & Circumstances of the SL&C
The second Demurrer (p. 6) objects that we have sworn by no “terror” to withdraw ourselves from this blessed union, but to continue in it all our lives against all opposition.
If there were nothing else in the world yet these words sufficiently prove that we are now absolutely absolved from the Covenant; for first, they relate to a state and time of union in which we were according to the united strengths of two nations, two magistracies and of the respective magistracies and people here enabled, yea commanded to make great opposition against those who then were actually united in arms against the parliament. But now that we are supposed by these authors to be disunited as our enemies are and that the magistracy is changed, our state of subordination [being] somewhat varied, that the links of our former chain are broken; and that the Commons act alone without a king, as the Lords and Commons acted before without one, and that the Scottish nation by their invasion and their attempting to divide the king from us, and us one from another by their declaration made preparatorily for division thereby to favor invasion afterward, have in the face of all the world broken whatever was of national union and peace, yea and all that which was of confidence betwixt ourselves at home; and (which was yet more horrid) in encouraging one principal army in Ireland to fall off from the advantages it had against the bloody rebels to turn their swords against the parliament itself only out of a by-end of ambition, yea now (that the war being ended) we are to enter into an union of cohabitation, or in cooperation (as they have done in Scotland itself) with those who during their united hostilities occasioned our national union, are we, I say after all this, in the self-same union which they at first hoped might have been continued to them and us for all our lives?
That union supposed the war which then was, with the rest of the circumstances, and if we wish the same effect or union now, do we not thereby wish the same cause or war again amongst us? as we were to oppose arms to arms, so union to union and certainly that union of the parliaments of both kingdoms was at an end ever since the Scotch army here received their money and returned home, leaving the delinquents of both nations disunited and clearly reduced to receive condign punishment (as the Covenant calls it) at the respective judicatories of both kingdoms; and if it ended not then, yet it could not be consistent with their declaration and divisions presently after; and if not then, yet I am sure it could not be consistent with their national invasion, and tampering to divide all in England and Ireland, the effect whereof has been a change of government here and has made them totally distinct foreigners to us.
.
Covenant Breakers & the Original Enemy
The Demurrer’s premises in this argument by a new logic relate only to a state of public union and his conclusion relates only to a state of public disunion of the consequences whereof the Covenant says nothing at all in any article. It enjoins the bringing of delinquents to condign punishment and those private persons likewise among ourselves who should help on either divisions amongst us or the invasion of either nation first. But whither should they be brought to punishment? The Covenant answers either before the respective judicatories of each kingdom (who only have power to judge of what is condign) or before nobody.
It speaks likewise how we should unitedly venture our lives against the enemy which then was: it does not, or at least ought not to swear us to get the better of them forever, nor that we should in a rout or disunion end our lives against all opposition and without quarter.
.
Our Utmost Endeavors, “All the Days of our Lives” & Forever
If the terms of “our utmost endeavors”¹ and “all the days of our lives” are to be understood literally and that we must not survive any violation of the Covenant, then why do these gentlemen (who conclude themselves in the state of the Covenant thus understood) think of living till tomorrow?
¹ [The SL&C does not actually use this phrase, but only “we shall sincerely, really, and constantly… endeavor,” “We shall, with the same sincerity, reality, and constancy… endeavour,” “We shall also, with all faithfulness, endeavour,” “our true and unfeigned purpose, desire, and endeavour” etc. Nor does the term “forever” appear in the SL&C.]
The terms of “forever” or “for all the days of our lives” are not in our contracts to be understood naturally, but morally. For we find it plainly in the Judicial Law [of Moses] that after a Jew had taken a servant and bored a hole through his ear, he was (as the text says) to serve him “forever,” although one of them might possibly have died the next day and both of them after a while might have been made captives to others.
The law calls the league of marriage individua vitae consuetudo, a cohabitation for all the days of our lives. For so it should be ex voto contrahenti • m, in the sincere desires of the contractors. Yet we know one ordinarily dies before the other and that many conditions may happen to legitimate their divorce afterwards though the contract was never so religiously made in the presence of almighty God at first.
The Scots in their late proceedings with their king at the Hague (p. 6) interpret the words of “utmost endeavor” as morally as we do here. For the commissioners of the Kirk said they used their utmost endeavors to save the king’s life according to Covenant, but how? They answer that it was in papers, messages, declarations, testimonies and protestations only; they name not war or bloodshed, for they protested against that way last year as contrary to [the] Covenant when the parliament of Scotland invaded us; and I hope for the reputation of the religion they profess, they have not altered their public commentary of that sacred text contradictorily so soon.
.
The SL&C Stands or Falls as a Whole
To conclude, either we are still in the union of the end of the Covenant or we are not. If we be in it, then these break the Covenant by seeking to disunite us. If we be not in it, where then is the article for our private forming a war upon it? and under whom, if not under our English supreme judicatory? and if they call us not out to revenge that which was more than a bare falling off from the Covenant last year amongst ourselves (when the Scots exercised such high hostilities and were the first shatterers of all our frame (which otherwise might by God’s blessing have cemented again), how durst these private trumpets sound the alarm and open the wounds of the nations once more?
Though the respective judicatory of that kingdom now cannot make that which was once done, undone, yet by the present punishment of the Church, it is acknowledged that they hold the Covenant to have been more than nationally broken, in regard of the harm and damage which was done to us after it was broken. For there is a great deal of difference betwixt ceasing to help according to a league and acting hostily contrary to it, especially when no such penalty is in such a league expressed betwixt the parties.
But you will object that if the Covenant were so broken in one or two points by them, yet it does not follow that the whole Covenant is broken thereby and dead in every part.
I have answered before that we are no longer obliged to anything in it by the way of league and covenant. The reason here is because here in leagues everything is to be observed conjunctively, otherwise all is broken: which is so true and clear that if we look upon God’s league and Covenant with Israel, we shall find the same thing pronounced there. God said, “If ye keep my commandments, I will be your God and will maintain you in your plenty and in your land.” Yet He said that if they broke any one commandment in their part of Covenant, they were guilty of all and that all should be at an end betwixt them: just as St. John in the conclusion of his Revelation says whoever shall diminish but one word of that book defaces the whole and loses the whole benefit which he might expect thereby in the holy City by virtue of the second Covenant.
The SL&C does not Prohibit another Civil Government
It is asserted that there is no clause in any oath or covenant which in a common sense forbids obedience to a present government. To this Grand Case of Conscience answers that the Covenant engages to another government; therefore it forbids obedience to this; and oaths ought to be their own interpreters.
Here he at first begs the question whether the Covenant can now engage us or no? seeing it has been proved that that which is now nothing cannot now engage us to anything; and consequently our submitting to and acting under the present government cannot be contrary to Covenant because things which are contrary one to the other must have actual being together at the same time. But the very being of this government supposes the nullity of the Covenant, whose death (as it was other where contrived before) gave life to that mutation here afterwards.
Secondly, though the Covenant were still valid and in force, yet when we were sworn to it first, it found us actually out of that government here pointed at, viz. of king, Lords and Commons. For that is the supreme government of a country which makes a supreme law there: But at that time the supremest human law, which (according to these gentlemen’s opinions) was ever made in England or Scotland, or perhaps in all the world, was made without the king in those kingdoms and against his dissent. For which reason the Covenant engages not so positively for king or kingly government as for the union of the covenanters in any form and against any opposition; whereupon the presbyterians, when it was (as most conceived) in their power to reestablish king or kingly government, they omitted both for many days of their lives without question, because they conceived it not a government absolutely necessary by Covenant. When D. Hamilton entered England so hostilely for that end, and as he thought by virtue of Covenant, yet he was excommunicated for it by the oracles of the Covenant.
Lastly, the reign of the Covenant since the first day of its birth and obligation was never yet a regal reign, no not for one day anywhere, so that the change which is, is not determinately contrary to that principle out of which (according to the circumstances of security) any government may be molded for any place. For which reason if I should grant you that the Covenant were not expired and had not been so palpably broken as it was betwixt the nations, yet Scotland (if they had pleased) might have been governed by a king and England by a free state, and yet both consonantly enough to Covenant and without any contrariety, because the circumstances of security in one might have been different from the circumstances of security in the other, which though different, might as well have been mutually maintained as their [Church] discipline differing from ours might have been preserved by us.
From all which it appears that that oath is cloudy in the positive or set government which we ought to have and so cannot be justly called its own interpreter besides a reformation according to the Word of God; and the example of the best reformed Churches supposes such a latitude of logic as would (if all sides should be heard) give us as much exercise as all our wars have.
And certainly the Covenant is alike undefined in religion and in civil government. For we swore to bring the Church discipline in the three kingdoms to as near a similitude as the constitution of the places would bear, not into the very same; and as for the civil government, it was to receive its form in the security of that, just as water does receive not only the figure of the pot or glass into which it is put, but its conservation from being totally lost and spilled. But how then will you free yourself from this contradiction in asserting that the civil state is unalterable by Covenant, when that of the Church which forms the other is so much alterable? and seeing that of the State receives from this, not only its form and being, but whatever else you alone please to attribute to your security in it? From whence I conclude again that a change of government is consistent with Covenant, and that a submission to it in lawful things is much more, and consequently it engages not to any one determinate government, and so is not against this of ours [under Cromwell’s regime].
.
Presbytery vs. Royalty
I believe it has been a frequent observation of many who have calmly conversed with our divines and others zealous for presbytery that they have found them little satisfied with that sort of presbytery which our parliament modelled for us of this nation as having little affinity with the Covenant. My belief is that they in that discerned not the consequence of their own dissatisfaction. For if their consciences regulated by [the] Covenant can admit no civil government but the kingly (which they so much argue for here) and if the Covenant and a Scotch presbytery (whose right they hold to be divine) be essentially linked together, then we and they may all of us learn, not only from direct inferences, but from the declared experience of the son, the father, the grandfather and great grandmother, that is of the three last Scotch kings and one queen, that if the Scotch presbytery come out of the Covenant, then kingly government cannot derive from it, because they are jurisdictions incompatible and inconsistent in the same place, and if one can conserve it, then may we say as much of the other.
How much Mary Queen of Scotland [1542-1587] experienced of this, let the world judge by that which she wrote both with ink in her letters and with her blood on the scaffold. For how came she to be beheaded in England, but by Mr. [John] Knox (and the Kirk’s having done little better than) put her into the hands of those who could not keep her long alive with security to themselves?
King James [1566–1625] has writ and argued largely concerning his dangers and sufferings under it, and it is yet remembered in what dialect they of the presbytery were wont to preach and pray against him to his face, and he not know how to remedy it or by what right to top theirs. When he came into England he professed his deliverance from that subjection not of small satisfaction to his mind, and therefore at this distance he contrived how to extinguish or check that state there, and after some progress in that work he himself died peaceably in a milder country.
But King Charles [1600–1649] with that crown inherited the consequences of that undertaking, for his first troubles began in the controversy of that presbytery; and what a preservation he thought the Covenant (from which it seems their presbytery is so inseparable) might be to him and what his fate was and who helped it on, nay who diverted him from agreement here, all the world knows and in his writings likewise he has shown to the world that he himself was not ignorant of it. This only is the wonder, that in the midst of this their specious zeal for kingly government, the Covenant should be so silent concerning royal posterity, or for their succession, in case the Scots or English soldiers had killed the king casually before he had given them the satisfaction which they required.
The consideration of all this, with some other [things] lately offered to the young prince at the Hague by the Scotch commissioners, and the satisfaction which they in their late declaration require from him, as they did from his father, have questionless made him scruple so long at his adventure into that country, though so much invited. For they told him (pp. 14-15) that for longer than these eight years, yea ever since that Queen Mary, their fundamental privilege has been to assemble in parliament and to conclude there of themselves either without king or king’s commissioners; and that if his Majesty refuse those their reasonable desires, they shall be constrained in so great an extremity to do what is incumbent on them to preserve religion and the kingdom from ruin. Here they plainly acknowledge and assume that supreme power and right which shall be proved here more evidently towards the conclusion.
.
The Eternal Covenant’s Infinite Matter & Application
But because I intend truth here in the simplicity of my heart and no way to swell this argument either with passion in myself or with scandal to any man else, therefore I shall sincerely unfold what has long been a mystery to myself, and for confirmation of what I have asserted here so positively I shall give the reader the express word of our great English Covenant-champion and of Master [Alexander] Henderson, especially the Scotch champion, betwixt whose fingers the Covenant itself was molded.
The Grand Case of Conscience, p. 14, says, “But they who are now for the right of the son and continuance of the government are as much against the vices in and about him as about the father. And should he do as his father has done, they who are now for the performance of this oath and Covenant would as truly join against him as against the father. Who can call this regal language? which yet will be looked on as the English presbyterian-alarm, though but by one man.
He had done well in speaking of the performance of [the] Covenant by us all if he had offered a catalogue of all that which would fulfill the Covenant in all its terms without any further interpretation; but that which is supposed eternal for time is likewise infinite as to the matter which it may relate to by the application of human logic.
.
Henderson’s View
Mr. Henderson in his Newcastle conference with the king, pp. 24-25, says that the reforming power is in kings and princes; quibus deficientibus [by deficiences] it comes to the inferior magistrates; quibus deficientibus it descends to the gross of the people, but yet supposing still (as he says) that they be all of them rightly informed. For which reason, though he concealed it from the king, yet he meant that the reformation of any of those three powers, according to the Covenant must be judged and reformed afterwards by some other body of men here not named. For I conceive that he who is ultimately to judge of the reformation and of its public obligation, judges likewise of the reformers themselves though never so high or never so low; and to this strange opinion he would fain entitle two English episcopal champions Bilson and Jewel.
Here I must confess I was at a stand concerning the nature and interest of the Covenant and was sorry to see that I was no plainlier told whether it would carry me (laden with so great a curse), nor where it would set me down. At last I found in the same author, pp. 32-33, speaking of the subordination of powers under which people were finally to obey, that he would not willingly tell his Majesty whether the Church was subordinate to the civil power, either to king or to parliament, or to both: For (quoth he) “I utterly desol • ima such a headship as the kings of England have claimed, or such a supremacy as the Houses of Parliament crave, with appeals from ecclesiastical judicature to themselves.”
No man may think but Mr. Henderson meant this for the jurisdiction of England as well as of Scotland, for he spake of Houses of Parliament which were plural in England only; and though it may seem strange at the first view to hear one say that the Scotch nation state the supremacy of England in their country, or that they endeavor a direct change of government, here (which they have indirectly attempted for a long while) let every man judge not by our subtleties but by the Kirk’s declaration, 27 July, 1649, pp. 11-12. Their words are that their king after his oath of coronation in Scotland shall assure them under his hand and seal to enjoin the Solemn League and Covenant, establish and practice the presbyterial government, directory, confession and catechism, as they are approved by the several assemblies of their Church and parliament, in “All His Dominions”, and that he shall never endeavor any change thereof.
.
An English, Independent Perspective
No man will say but states like judges ought to act ex bono et aequo [out of goodness and equity] conjunctively. So that though these things which here they would impose upon us perpetually, were never so good, yet they being unequitably derived upon us from their supreme judicatory (in whose possession we are not so fully now, as they were last year in ours) we ought to abominate their design, as much as they might the like obtrusion of their presbytery from hence, without power there to rectify it ever after. For these presbyterians with us grant that good and lawful things may not be practiced under a power unlawful, as they say the Scots would be here.
However, here I at last found who was my supreme right magistrate in the Kirk’s sense, but then I conceived I was in a great snare, because I saw the jus publicum [public right] of a kingdom totally, though secretly changed. I saw all things of direct religion, and whatsoever related collaterally to its security, lodged there, and by the Church prejudged from the judgment of all other authorities in Scotland especially. But because religion and its security draws in all human concernments, and that two supreme collateral powers cannot stand in one and the same place, in the same time, for the same person, but for contrary actions, therefore I knew not whither of the two supreme powers the ecclesiastical or the civil I should in this case throw away, for they could not in this contest by the judgment of any be both obeyed together; and I stood in a miserable case betwixt a jailor and a devil: the Church giving me to the Devil if I obeyed the civil power, and the civil power giving me to the jailor if I obeyed the Church, which was (to speak the truth) the state of the whole kingdom of Scotland last year betwixt the Kirk’s excommunication and the parliament’s order which authorized Duke Hamilton’s expedition in vindication of the Covenant here: In which difference we have no reason but to like the effect, however we may dislike such a cause here.
Wherefore to answer this scruple, I positively say that in whatsoever is of pact betwixt man and man or of policy in the Covenant, I ought solely to follow the civil magistrate, and the Church here ought to follow the magistrate likewise, as a case relating to the disquits to the wars and to the recovering the peace of earthly kingdoms: If otherwise, then the civil jurisdiction ought clearly to be managed by the ecclesiastic, which is stated so nowhere (that I know of) but in Romagna and Duchy of Ferrara and the other places belonging to the Pope.
This I speak not as desirous to detract anything from the sacred function of the ministry as it contains itself in its own function, no man being able rationally to object anything wherefore some might not ex officio be deputed to excite others to virtue and sanctity of life. But yet who can say they are not subject to the infirmities of ambition, avarice and severe passions as well as other men? or have not our antagonists (whether they would or no) observed them in these cases of worldly rights and interests, to have as oppositely, yet as peremptorily differed one from another, as people of any family ever did? The Devil not being able to get the text on his side, by his wiles oft got the commentary, so that we are to be excused if we hold many things in Churchmen to be but as an Apocrypha at best, which yet for esteem sake is alloted a place before anything else, next after the genuine text.
.
Title vs. Power
Having thus openly stated the scruples of my own and of many more consciences, and to take off masks not from the faces, but from the consciences of these three and the multitude of other Scotch casuists, who have talked so speciously for our Covenant, vindication of an heir’s just title, our submitting to it and joining with others immediately lest right suffer wrong one day, I cannot (I say) but ask the same men plainly, “What difference in effect they find betwixt the titles and right of the Prince of Wales and of the now King of Scotland, notwithstanding all their obligation of Covenant to submit to him as such?”
It is not enough by Covenant to preserve an airy title only to a prince and by the same Covenant to suspend all the rest of his solid power and right? Certainly his royal commands (notwithstanding all this talk) are no more obeyed in Scotland now than the episcopal commands of our countryman, the bishop of Chalcedon, are now obeyed in Turkey.
.
The King & the SL&C
But what hinders him from exercising any kingly right in Scotland as yet? The Covenant which is not yet satisfied. How is it then that some of our presbyterians say that the same Covenant indispensably opens the door to him here? If the king ask the Scots why they put the law of the Covenant so to his obedience, the first thing which determines all his other rights afterwards, they can only say that they swore it in his father’s reign and it is now eternal. Though I censure nothing here, yet I cannot but conclude hence that they of themselves, as well as our parliament, have made a law above all other laws (and more than a reformable Magna Charta) for the government of the kingdom, which may be exercised according to it without kings and against kings.
The first thing which was ever offered to him from the kingdom of Scotland was an authority by far transcending his own, viz. that of [the threat of] excommunication. For (as their late proceedings with him at the Hague show), he was by that subtlety tried, whether he would refuse first to acknowledge James Graham (alias Montrosse) or that great power of the Churches, by which he might be awed to greater things afterwards. To back this, likewise the commissioners of the synod said (p. 22) that they negotiated with him in a capacity altogether distinct from the commissioners of parliament, as being persons commissioned by the Church, which is commissioned with a jus divinum [divine-right]. Our bishops certainly never undertook such a jurisdiction and supremacy, and unless these had witnessed so much of themselves to all the world, no one would believe that in such a poor country [as Scotland], and so much form of religion, there could be such high passions of ambition.
.
The Scotch Church’s Interpretation of the SL&C
Besides if it be a true rule that he who is the maker, ought to be the interpreter of a law, then let all the world observe one thing, that the Kirk having made the Covenant (as the principle of all supreme rights both of State and religion) then they alone ought to give the interpretation of it from time to time, as they de facto did not only last year, contrary to the interpretation of their own parliament, but also for many years together have peremptorily pressed it upon ours: So that it makes a fundamental change of government there, though differently from what our parliament has made here, the jus publicum both of religion and security of State with them lying in the Covenant, and that lying in the breasts of Churchmen chosen by one another: and our’s lying in the power of laymen, chosen by the people and judging by the common laws of equity and necessity and of the Word of God.
It were in vain to say the Church only recommends their interpretation to the State. For last year they did it with a penalty upon the parliament, their whole army, and the body of the people which obeyed them; if it be a penalty to be given to the Devil, and to be put into a state of eternal death. Wherefore they there are (or else none are anywhere) the true judges of right, who make themselves judges of wrong and of punishment.
.
Conclusion
To conclude how practicable soever the Covenant was at first, or how erroneously soever we may now conceive it to be extinct, or to be a principle fitted to justify a change of kingly government, which was actually made first of all by it and their presbytery in Scotland; yet it being originally but a political or conditional oath relating to our former unions when war was, and to our cooperation under our respective magistrates only, not in a way contrary to the Fifth Commandment; and that all the magistracy which we enjoy, and by whom we are now fully possessed, if they have not laid it aside, yet call us not out to act the remaining part of it; and that it interprets not itself: so that each private man is not made by it his own magistrate; and that there is no penal article in it obliging us private men to pursue a public war upon the magistrates, or any other men’s bare neglect or misinterpreting it to themselves; who therefore can contrary to all this peremptorily warrant us now, yea necessitate us to begin or assist to the desolation of war and bloodshed upon it? especially seeing it is made very dubious at least whether we be now tied to it at all or no.
Furthermore, how good so ever it was at first, yea though that other nation [Scotland] had not given it it’s mortal wound when they attempted to give us ours, both in England and in Ireland (which was the cause of this effect of change of government here), yet if when it was in force, it should any other way have received a bad tincture of passion or ambitious policy among ourselves, why might it not by our magistrate’s order have been as well carried out of our churches as the brazen serpent was out of the temple after it was unhappily perverted to its wrong end?
If otherwise, and that it must at all hazards be indirectly made a snare to peaceable consciences even after it is extinct (as has been proved), I shall desire any pious spirit to judge whether it does not in such a case deserve much of Campanella’s censure which he gave upon the Spaniards’ India Treasury, that it was gotten in blood, sails home in a sea of blood and never rests till it be all laid out in blood.
.
Conclusion to Whole Book
The reader may be pleased to take notice that though these replies for the most part touch but on simple obedience to a government supposed unlawful, but commanding lawful things, yet they virtually extend to our acting under such a government. It is to be presumed that our adversaries not contesting professedly what has been publicly argued in that point, do conceive the difficulties of acting under, involved in those of our submission to such a power.
The distinction of active and passive obedience is but a nicety, and if one be not a sin, the other is not. They are in a manner the same thing, derive from the same principle and differ but gradually, just as the morning and the noon-light do, which derive both from the same planet. For he who takes pains to furnish in an axe, and he who took pains to execute the office of a judge or of a justice of peace in honest things by virtue of commissions and orders from the same supreme (but illegal) magistracy, do both of them what they do by virtue of the same original submission, which is a passive obedience.
If this be otherwise, then (according to these authors’ opinion) we and all our forefathers have sinned in obeying those actively or passively, who by unjust usurpation have come betwixt us and them, who derive from the first who were in compact, unless the lapse of time can justify the viciousness of an action (which is impossible) or that we may lawfully obey those who plenarily possess and protect us and command us lawful things.
.
The End
.
.
.
Related Pages
Vows can Never Bind Beyond God’s Law
On the Ethics of being under Usurped Powers
Westminster Divines on Armed Resistance to Tyranny