A SERMON OP REPENTANCE. 351 and that nothing unnecessary may be imposed as necessary, nor the church's unity laid on that whichwill not bear it, nor ever did. O that we might but have leave to serve God only as Christ bath commanded us, and to go to heaven in the same way as the apostles did! These are our desires; and whether they are rea- sonable, God will judge. Give first to God the things that are God's, and then give to Casar the things that are Casar's. Let your wisdom be first pure, and then peaceable. Not but that we are resolved to be loyal to sovereignty, though you deny us all these. Whatever malicious men pretend, that is not, nor shall not, be our difference. I have proved more publicly, when it was more dangerous to publish it, that the generality of the orthodox, sober ministers, and godly peo- ple of this nation, did never consent to king-killing, and resisting sovereign power, nor the change of the ancient government of this land, but abhorred the pride and ambition that attempted it. I again repeat it, the blood of some, the imprisonment and displacing of others, the banishment or flight of others, and the detestations and public protestations of more ; theoft-declared senseof England, and the wars and sad estate of Scotland, have all declared before the world, to the shame of calumniators, that the generality of the orthodox, sober Protestants of these nations,have been true to their allegiance, and detesters of unfaithfulness and ambition in subjects, and resisters .of heresy and schism in the church, and of anarchy and democratical confusions in the commonwealth. And though the land bath ringed with complaints and threatenings against myself, for publishing a little of the mixture of Jesuitical and Familistical contrivances, for taking down together our government and religion,, and setting up newones for the introduction of Popery, infidelity, and heresy, yet I am assured that there is much more of this con- federacy for the allrseeing God to discover in time,. to the shame ofPapists, that cannot be content to write themselves for the kill- ingof kings when the pope hathonce excommunicated them,andby the decrees of a general council at the Lateran, to depose princes that will not extirpate such as the pope calls heretics, and absolve all their subjects from their fidelity and allegiance, but they must also creep into the councils and armies of Protestants, and, taking theadvantageofsuccesses and ambition, withdraw men at once from their religion and allegiance, that they may cheat the world into a belief that treasons are the fruits of the Protestant profession, when these masked jugglers have come by night, and sown and cherish- ed these Romish tares. As a Papist must cease to be a Papist if he will be truly and fully loyal to his sovereign, (as I am ready to prove against any adversary,) so a Protestant must so far cease to be a Protestant, before he can be disloyal. For Rom. 13. is part of the rule of his religion. Unhappily there hath been a differ-
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