despair of My Subjects affections returning towards me._
_Thou canst soon cause the overflowing Seas to ebbe, and retire back
again to the bounds which thou hast appointed for them._
_O My God, I trust in thee; let me not be ashamed; let not my enemies
triumph over me._
_Let them be ashamed who transgress without a cause; let them be
turned back that persecute my soul._
_Let integrity and uprightness preserve me, for I wait on thee O
Lord._
_Redeem thy Church, O God, out of all its Troubles._
* * * * *
_14. Upon the Covenant._
The _Presbyterian Scots_ are not to be hired at the ordinary rate of
Auxiliaries; nothing will induce them to engage, till those that
call them in, have pawned their Souls to them, by a Solemn League and
Covenant.
Where many engines of religious and fair pretensions are brought
chiefly to batter or rase Episcopacy: This they make the grand evil
Spirit, which with other Imps purposely added, to make it more odious,
& terrible to the Vulgar, must by so solemn a charm & exorcism be cast
out of this Church, after more then a thousand years possession here,
from the first plantation of Christianity in this Island, and an
universal prescription of time and practice in all other Churches
since the Apostles times till this last Century.
But no Antiquity must plead for it; Presbytery like a young Heir,
thinks the Father hath lived long enough, & impatient not to be in the
Bishops chair and authority (though Lay-men go away with the Revenus)
all art is used to sink Episcopacy, and lanch Presbytery in _England_;
which was lately boyed up in _Scotland_ by the late artifice of a
Covenant.
Although I am unsatisfied with many passages in that Covenant some
referring to my self with very dubious and dangerous limitations (yet
I chiefly wonder at the design and drift touching the Discipline and
Government of the Church); and such a manner of carrying them on to new
ways, by Oaths and Covenants, where it is hard for men to be engaged
by no less, then swearing for, or against those things, which are of
no clear morall necessity, but very disputable, and controverted among
learned and godly men: whereto the application of Oaths can hardly be
made and enjoyned with that judgment and certainty in ones self, or
that charity or candour to others of different opinion, as I think
religion requires, which never refuses fair and equable deliberations;
yea, and
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