136 LIFE OF RICHARD BAXTER. death of the king, had twelve years kept out his son, few men saw any probability of his restitution, and every self-conceited fellow was ready to offer his model for a new form ofgovernment. Mr. Hobbes's ' Leviathan' had pleased many. Mr. Thomas White, the great Papist, had writtenhis Politics in English, for the interest of the protector, to prove that subjects ought to submit and subject themselves to such a change. And now Mr. James Harrington (they say, by the help of Mr. Neville) had written a book in folio for a democracy, called Oceana, seriously describing a form near to the Venetian, and setting the people upon the desires of a change. After this, Sir H. Vane and his party were about their sectarian democratical model, which Stubbs defended. Rogers, Needham, and Mr. Bagshaw, had also written against monarchy before. In the end of an epistle before my book ofCrucifying the World,' I had spoken a few words against this innovation and opposition to monarchy ; and, having especially touched upon ' Oceana' and Leviathan,' Mr. Harrington seemed in a Bethlehem rage ; for, by way of scorn, he printed half a sheet of foolish jeers, in such words as idiots or drunkards use, railing at ministers as a pack of fools and knaves ; and, by his gibberish derision, persuading men that we deserve no other answer than such scorn and nonsense as beseem- eth fools. With most insolent pride he carried it, as if neither I nor any ministers understood at all what . policy was, but prated against, we knewnot what, and had presumed.-to speak against other men's art, which he was master of, and his knowledge, to such idiots, as we, incomprehensible. This made me think it fit; having given that general hint against. his ' Oceana,' to give a more particular charge, and withal to give the world and him an account of my political principles, to show what I held, as well as what I denied; which I did in that book called ' Holy Commonwealth,' as contrary to his heathenish commonwealth. In which! pleaded the cause of monarchy as better than democracyand aristocracy ; but as under God, the universal Monarch. -Here Bishop Morley bath his matter of charge against me, of which one part is, that I spake against unlimited monarchy., because Godhimself bath limited all monarchs. If I had said laws limit monarchs, I might; amongst some men, be thought a traitor and inexcusable; but to say that God limiteth monarchs, I thought had never before been chargeable with treason, or opposed by any that believed that there- is a God. If they are indeed unlimited in respect ofGod, wehave many Gods or no God. But now it is dangerous to meddle withthese matters, most men say, Let God defend himself. " In the end ofthis book is an appendix concerning the,cause of the parliament's first war." "And this paper it is that containeth
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