King of England Charles I

“ Nor can I suffer so much in point of Honour, by those rude and scandalous Pamphlets (which like fire in great conflagrations, fly up and down to set all places on like flames) as those men do, who pretending to so much piety, are so forgetfull of their duty to God and Me: By no way ever vindicating the Majesty of their King against any of those, who contrary to the precept of God, and precedent of Angels, speak evil of dignities, and bring railing accusations against those who are honoured with the name of Gods.
But 'tis no wonder if men not fearing God, should not honour their King. ”

“ Thou, O Lord, art the fountain of goodness and honour; thou art cloathed with excellent Majesty; make me to partake of thy excellency for wisdom, justice and mercy, and I shall not want that degree of Honour and Majestie which becomes the Place in which thou hast set me; who art the lifter up of my head, and my Salvation.
Lord, by thy Grace, lead me to thy Glory, which is both true and eternall. ”

“ Thou knowest, that it is not any perverseness of will, but just perswasions of Honour, Reason, and Religion, which have made me thus far to hazard my Person, Peace, and Safetie, against those that by force have sought to wrest them from me.
Suffer not my just resolutions to abate with my outward Forces; let a good Conscience alwaies accompany me in my solitude and desertions.
Suffer me not to betray the powers of Reason, and that fortresse of my Soul which I am entrusted to keep for thee.
Lead me in the paths of thy righteousnesse, and shew me thy salvation. ”

“ I shall have no cause to repent the miseries this Parliament hath occasioned, when by them thou hast brought me and my people unfeignedly to repent of the sins we have committed.
Thy grace is infinitely better with our sufferings, then our Peace could be with our sins.
O thou soveraign goodness and wisdom, who over-rulest all our Counsels; over-rule also all our hearts; That the worse things we suffer by thy Justice, the better we may be by thy mercie. ”

“ Wherein yet, I thank God, the detriment of My Honor is not so afflictive to Me, as the sin and danger of My peoples souls, whose eyes once blinded with such mists of suspicions, they are soon misled into the most desperate precipices of actions: wherein they do not only, not consider their sin and danger, but glory in their zealous adventures; while I am rendred to them so fit to be destroyed, that many are ambitious to merit the name of My Destroyers; Imagining they then fear God most, when they least honor their King. ”

“ Teach me the noblest victory over my self and my enemies by patience, which was Christs conquest, and may well become a Christian King.
Between both thy hands, the right sometimes supporting, and the left afflicting, fashion us to that frame of Piety thou likest best.
Forgive the pride that attends our prosperous, and the repinings which follow our disastrous events; when going forth in our own strength thou withdrawest thine, and goest not forth with our Armies. ”

“ Rebuke those beasts of the people, and deliver Me from the rudenesse and strivings of the multitude.
Restore, We beseech thee, unto Us, the freedoms of Our Councels and Parliaments, make Us unpassionately to see the light of Reason, and Religion, and with all order and gravity to follow it, as becomes Men and Christians; so shall We praise thy Name, who art the God of order and counsel.
What man cannot, or will not represse, thy Omnipotent Justice can and will. ”

“ Reason is the divinest power. I shall never think my Self weakned, while I may make full and free use of that. No ecclipse of outward Fortune shall rob me of that light: what God hath denied of outward strength, his grace, I hope, will supply with inward resolutions; not morositie to deny, what is fit to be granted; but not to grant any thing which Reason and Religion bids me denie. ”

“ That preventing thy judgments by their true repentance, they may escape the stroaks of thine eternal vengeance.
And do Thou, O Lord, establish the Throne of thy Servant in mercie and truth meeting together; let my Crown ever flourish in righteousness and peace kissing each other.
Hear my prayer, O Lord, who hast taught us to pray for, to doe good to, and to love our Enemies for thy sake; who hast prevented us with offertures of thy love, even when we were thine enemies, and hast sent thy Son Jesus Christ to die for us, when we were disposed to crucifie Him. ”

“ If thou Lord wilt be with me, I shall neither fear nor feel any evill, though I walk thorow the valley of the shadow of death.
To contend with death is the work of a weak and mortall man; to overcome it, is the grace of thee alone, who art the Almighty and immortall God.
O my Saviour, who knowest what it is to die with me as a Man; make me know what it is to passe through death to life with thee my God.
Though I die, yet I know that thou my Redeemer livest for ever: though thou slayest Me, yet thou hast encouraged me to trust in thee for eternal life. ”

“ No man was better pleased with the convening of this Parliament then My self; who knowing best the largenesse of my own Heart toward my Peoples good and just contentment, pleased my self most in that good and firm understanding, which would hence grow between me and my people.
All jealousies being laid aside, my own and my Childrens Interests gave me many obligations to seek and preserve the love and welfare of my Subjects; The only temporal blessing that is left to the ambition of just Monarchs, as their greatest honour and safety, next Gods protection. ”

“ If the poverty of Scotland might, yet the plenty of England cannot excuse the envy and rapine of the Churches Rights and Revenues.
I cannot so much as pray God to prevent those sad consequences, which will inevitably follow the parity and poverty of Ministers, both in Church and State; since I think it no lesse then a mocking and tempting of God, to desire him to hinder those mischiefs whose occasions and remedies are in our own power; it being every mans sin not to avoid the one, and not to use the other. ”

“ And indeed, I desire alwaies more to remember I am a Christian, then a King; for what the Majesty of one might justly abhor, the Charity of the other is willing to bear; what the height of a King tempteth to revenge, the humilitie of a Christian teacheth to forgive, keeping in compass all those impotent passions, whose excess injures a man more then his greatest enemies can; for these give their malice a full impression on our souls, which otherwise cannot reach very far, nor do us much hurt. ”

“ For my self, I do not think that I can want any thing which providential necessity is pleased to take from me, in order to my Peoples tranquillity and Gods glory, whose protection is sufficient for me; and he is able by his being with me, abundantly to compensate to me, as he did to Job, what-ever Honour, Power, or Liberty the Chaldeans, the Sabeans, or the Divel himself can deprive me of. ”

“ Not in the odious disguise of Levitie, Schism, Heresie, Noveltie, Crueltie and Disloyaltie, which some mens practices have put upon it.
Let her see thy sacred and saving Truths as Thine; that she may believe, love and obey them as Thine, cleared from all rust and drosse of humane mixtures.
That in the glasse of thy Truth Shee may see thee in those Mercies which thou hast offered to us in thy Son Jesus Christ, our onely Saviour, and serve thee in all those holy Duties, which most agree with his holy Doctrine, and most imitable example. ”

“ In these extremities, I look not to man so much as to God: He will have it thus, that I may cast my self, and my now distressed Affairs upon his mercy, who hath both hearts and hands of all men in his dispose.
What Providence denies to Force, it may grant to Prudence; Necessity is now my Counsellor, and commands Me to study My safety by a disguised withdrawing from my chiefest strength, and adventuring upon their Loyalty, who first began my troubles. Happily, God may make them a means honorable to compose them. ”

“ To thee, O Lord, do I addresse my Prayer, beseeching thee to pardon the rashness of my Subjects Swearings, and to quicken their sense and observation of those just, morall and indispensable bonds, which thy word and the Laws of this Kingdom have laid upon their Consciences; From which no pretensions of Piety & reformation [page 120] are sufficient to absolve them; or to engage them to any contrary practises.
Make them at length seriously to consider that nothing violent and injurious can be religious.
Thou allowest no mans committing Sacriledge under the zeal of abhorring Idols. ”

“ When thou hast vindicated thy glory by thy judgments, and hast shewed us how unsafe it is to offend thee, upon presumptions afterwards to please thee, Then I trust thy mercy will restore those blessings to us, which we have so much abused, as to force thee to deprive us of them. ”

“ The Laws wil by Gods blessing, revive, with the love and Loyaltie of my Subjects; if I bury them not by my Consent, and cover them in that grave of dishonor and injustice, which some mens violence hath digged for them.
If my Captivity or Death must be the price of their redemption, I grudge not to pay it.
No condition can make a King miserable, which carries not with it, his Souls, his Peoples, and Posterities thraldom. ”

“ When these mountains of congealed Factions shall by the Sun-shine of Gods Mercy, and the splendor of your Vertues, be thawed and dissipated; and the abused Vulgar shall have learned, that none are greater Oppressours of their Estates, Liberties, and Consciences, then those men that intitle themselves The Patrons and Vindicators of them, only to usurp power over them: Let then no passion betray You to any study of revenge upon those, whose own sin and folly will sufficiently punish them in due time. ”

“ That the Majesty of the Kings of England might hereafter hang like Mahomet's Tomb, by a magnetique Charm, between the Power and Priviledges of the two Houses, in an airy imagination of Regality.
But I beleeve the surfet of too much power, which some men have greedily seized on, and now seek wholly to devour, will ere long make the Common-wealth sick both of it and them, since they cannot well digest it; Soveraign Power in Subjects seldom agreeing with the stomacks of fellow-subjects. ”

“ Who were the chief Demagogues and Patrons of Tumults, to send for them, to flatter and embolden them, to direct and tune their clamorous importunities, some men yet living are too conscious to pretend ignorance: God in his due time will let these see, That those were no fit means to be used for attaining his ends. ”

“ O Powerfull and Eternall God! to whom nothing is so great, that it may resist; or so small, that it is contemned; look upon my miserie with thine eye of mercy, and let Thine infinite power vouchsafe to limit out some proportion of deliverance unto me, as to Thee shall seem most convenient; let not Injurie, O Lord, triumph over me ”

“ If God shall see fit to restore Me, and You after Me, to those enjoyments, which the Laws have assigned to Us, and no Subjects without an high degree of guilt and sin can devest Us of, then may I have better opportunity, when I shall be so happy to see You in peace, to let You more fully understand the things that belong to Gods glory, Your own honor, and the Kingdoms peace. ”

“ What Tumults and Armies could not obtain, neither shall Restraint; which though it have a little of safety to a Prince, yet it hath not more of danger.
The fear of men shall never be my snare; nor shal the love of any liberty entangle my soul: Better others betray me, then my self: and that the price of my liberty should be my conscience; [page 203] the greatest injuries my Enemies seek to inflict upon me, cannot be without my own consent. ”

“ Happily where men have tried the horrours and malignant influence which will certainly follow my enforced darkness and Eclypse, (occasioned by the interposition and shadow of that body, which as the Moon receiveth its chiefest lights from me) which will at length more esteem and welcome the restored glory and blessing of the Suns light.
And if at present I may seem by My receding so much from the use of my Right in the Power of the Militia, to come short of the discharge of that trust to which I am sworn for my peoples protection; I conceive those men are guilty of the inforced perjury ”

“ For want of timely repentance of our sins, Thou givest us cause to Repent of those Remedies we too late apply.
Yet I doe not repent of my calling the last Parliament, because O Lord, I did it with an upright intention to thy glory, and My Peoples good.
The miseries which have ensued upon me and my Kingdoms, are the just effects of thy displeasure upon us; and may be yet, through thy mercy, preparatives of us to future blessings and better hearts to enjoy them. ”

“ Time will dissipate all Factions, when once the rough horns of private mens covetous and ambitious designes shall discover themselves; which were at first wrapt up and hidden under the soft and smooth pretensions of Religion, Reformation and Liberty. As the Wolf is not less cruell, so he wil be more justly hated, when he shall appear no better then a Wolf under Sheeps cloathing. ”

“ My Charge and Counsell to You, is, That as you need no palliations for any Designes, (as other men) so that you study really to exceed [in true and constant demonstrations [page 243] of goodness, piety, and vertue towards the people] even all those men that make the greatest noise and ostentations of Religion; so you shall neither fear any detection (as they do who have but the face and mask of goodness) nor shall you frustrate the just expectations of your people; who cannot in Reason promise themselves so much good from any Subjects novelties, as from the vertuous constancy of their King. ”