The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift/Volume 10/Upon the Martyrdom of King Charles
A
SERMON
UPON THE
MARTYRDOM OF KING CHARLES I.
PREACHED AT ST. PATRICK'S, DUBLIN, JAN. 30, 1725-6, BEING SUNDAY.
GENESIS xlix. 5, 6, 7.
I KNOW very well, that the church hath been often censured for keeping holy this day of humiliation, in memory of that excellent king and blessed martyr Charles I, who rather chose to die on a scaffold, than betray the religion and liberties of his people, wherewith God and the laws had entrusted him. But, at the same time, it is manifest that those who make such censures, are either people without any religion at all, or who derive their principles, and perhaps their birth, from the abettors of those who contrived the murder of that prince, and have not yet shown the world that their opinions are changed. It is alleged, that the observation of this day hath served to continue and increase the animosity and enmity among our countrymen, and to disunite protestants; that a law was made, upon the restoration of the martyr's son, for a general pardon and oblivion, forbidding all reproaches upon that occasion; and since none are now alive who were actors or instruments in that tragedy, it is thought hard and uncharitable to keep up the memory of it for all generations.
Now, because I conceive most of you to be ignorant in many particulars concerning that horrid murder, and the rebellion which preceded it; I will,
First, relate to you so much of the story as may be sufficient for your information:
Secondly, I will tell you the consequences which this bloody deed had upon these kingdoms:
And, lastly, I will show you to what good uses this solemn day of humiliation may be applied.
As to the first; in the reign of this prince, Charles the martyr, the power and prerogative of the king were much greater than they are in our times, and so had been for at least seven hundred years before; and the best princes we ever had, carried their power much farther than the blessed martyr offered to do, in the most blameable part of his reign. But, the lands of the crown having been prodigally bestowed to favourites in the preceding reigns, the succeeding kings could not support themselves without taxes raised by parliament; which put them under a necessity of frequently calling those assemblies; and the crown lands being gotten into the hands of the nobility and gentry, beside the possessions of which the church had been robbed by king Henry the Eighth, power, which always follows property, grew to lean to the side of the people, by whom even the just rights of the crown were often disputed.
But farther: upon the cruel persecution raised against the protestants, under queen Mary, among great numbers who fled the kingdom to seek for shelter, several went and resided at Geneva, which is a commonwealth governed without a king, and where the religion contrived by Calvin, is without the order of bishops. When the protestant faith was restored by queen Elizabeth, those who fled to Geneva returned among the rest home to England, and were grown so fond of the government and religion of the place they had left, that they used all possible endeavours to introduce both into their own country; at the same time continually preaching and railing against ceremonies and distinct habits of the clergy; taxing whatever they disliked as a remnant of popery; and continued extremely troublesome to the church and state, under that great queen, as well as her successor king James I. These people called themselves puritans, as pretending to a purer faith than those of the church established. And these were the founders of our dissenters. They did not think it sufficient to leave all the errours of popery; but threw off many laudable and edifying institutions of the primitive church, and at last, even the government of bishops; which, having been ordained by the apostles themselves, had continued without interruption, in all Christian churches, for above fifteen hundred years. And all this they did, not because those things were evil, but because they were kept by the papists. From thence they proceeded by degrees, to quarrel with the kingly government; because, as I have already said, the city of Geneva, to which their fathers had flown for refuge, was a commonwealth, or government of the people.
These puritans, about the middle of the martyr's reign, were grown to be a considerable faction in the kingdom, and in the lower house of parliament. They filled the publick with the most false and bitter libels against the bishops and the clergy, accusing chiefly the very best among them of popery; and at the same time, the house of commons grew so insolent and uneasy to the king, that they refused to furnish him with necessary supplies for the support of his family, unless upon such conditions as he could not submit to without forfeiting his conscience and honour, and even his coronation oath. And in such an extremity, he was forced upon a practice, no way justifiable, of raising money; for which, however, he had the opinion of the judges on his side; for wicked judges there were in those times as well as in ours. There were likewise many complaints, and sometimes justly made against the proceedings of a certain court, called the star-chamber, a judicature of great antiquity: but it had suffered some corruptions, for which, however, the king was nowise answerable. I cannot recollect any more subjects of complaint with the least ground of reason; nor is it needful to recollect them, because this gracious king did, upon the first application, redress all grievances by an act of parliament, and put it out of his power to do any hardships for the future. But that wicked faction in the house of commons, not content with all those marks of his justice and condescension, urged still for more; and joining with a factious party from Scotland, who had the same fancies in religion, forced him to pass an act for cutting off the head of his best and chief minister; and at the same time, compelled him, by tumults and threatnings of a packed rabble, poisoned with the same doctrines, to pass another law, by which it should not be in his power to dissolve that parliament, without their own consent. Thus, by the greatest weakness and infatuation that ever possessed any man's spirit, this prince did in effect sign his own destruction. For the house of commons, having the reins in their own hands, drove on furiously; sent him every day some unreasonable demand; and when he refused to grant it, made use of their own power, and declared that an ordinance of both houses, without the king's consent, should be obeyed as a law, contrary to all reason and equity, as well as to the fundamental constitution of the kingdom.
About this time the rebellion in Ireland broke out, wherein his parliament refused to assist him; nor would accept his offer to come hither in person to subdue those rebels. These, and a thousand other barbarities, forced the king to summon his loyal subjects to his standard in his own defence. Meanwhile the English parliament, instead of helping the poor protestants here, seized on the very army that his majesty was sending over for our relief, and turned them against their own sovereign. The rebellion in England continued for four or five years: at last the king was forced to fly in disguise to the Scots, who sold him to the rebels. And these puritans had the impudent cruelty to try his sacred person in a mock court of justice, and cut off his head; which he might have saved, if he would have yielded to betray the constitution in church and state.
In this whole proceeding, Simeon and Levi were brethren; the wicked insinuations of those fanatical preachers stirring up the cruelty of the soldiers, who, by force of arms, excluded from the house every member of parliament, whom they apprehended to bear the least inclination toward an agreement with the king, suffering only those to enter who thirsted chiefly for his blood; and this is the very account given by their own writers. Whence it is clear that this prince was, in all respects, a real martyr for the true religion and the liberty of the people. That odious parliament had first turned the bishops out of the house of lords; in a few years after, they murdered their king; then immediately abolished the whole house of lords; and so, at last, obtained their wishes, of having a government of the people, and a new religion, both after the manner of Geneva, without a king, a bishop, or a nobleman; and this they blasphemously called, "The kingdom of Christ and his saints."
This is enough for your information on the first head: I shall therefore proceed to the second, wherein I will show you the miserable consequences, which that abominable rebellion and murder produced in these nations.
First, The Irish rebellion was wholly owing to that wicked English parliament. For the leaders in the Irish popish massacre would never have dared to stir a finger, if they had not been encouraged by that rebellious spirit in the English house of commons, which they very well knew must disable the king from sending any supplies to his protestant subjects here; and therefore, we may truly say that the English parliament held the king's hands, while the Irish papists here were cutting our grandfathers throats.
Secondly, That murderous puritan parliament, when they had all in their own power, could not agree upon any one method of settling a form either of religion or civil government; but changed every day from schism to schism, from heresy to heresy, and from one faction to another: Whence arose that wild confusion still continuing in our several ways of serving God, and those absurd notions of civil power, which have so often torn us with factions, more than any other nation in Europe.
Thirdly, To this rebellion and murder have been owing the rise and progress of atheism among us. For men, observing what numberless villanies of all kinds were committed during twenty years, under pretence of zeal and the reformation of God's church, were easily tempted to doubt that all religion was a mere imposture: and the same spirit of infidelity, so far spread among us at this present, is nothing but the fruit of the seeds sown by those rebellious hypocritical saints.
Fourthly, The old virtue, and loyalty, and generous spirit of the English nation were wholly corrupted, by the power, the doctrine, and the example, of those wicked people. Many of the ancient nobility were killed, and their families extinct, in defence of their prince and country, or murdered by the merciless courts of justice. Some of the worst among them favoured or complied with the reigning iniquities; and not a few of the new set, created when the martyr's son was restored, were such who had drunk too deep of the bad principles then prevailing.
Fifthly, The children of the murdered prince were forced to fly, for the safety of their lives, to foreign countries; where one of them at least, I mean king James II, was seduced to popery; which ended in the loss of his kingdoms, the misery and desolation of this country, and a long and expensive war abroad. Our deliverance was owing to the valour and conduct of the late king; and therefore, we ought to remember him with gratitude, but not mingled with blasphemy or idolatry. It was happy that his interests and ours were the same: and God gave him greater success than our sins deserved. But, as a house thrown down by a storm, is seldom rebuilt without some change in the foundation; so it hath happened, that since the late revolution, men have sate much looser in the true fundamentals both of religion and government, and factions have been more violent, treacherous, and malicious than ever; men running naturally from one extreme into another; and for private ends, taking up those very opinions professed by the leaders in that rebellion, which carried the blessed martyr to the scaffold.
Sixthly, Another consequence of this horrid rebellion and murder was, the destroying or defacing of such vast number of God's houses. "In their self will they digged down a wall." If a stranger should now travel in England, and observe the churches in his way, he could not otherwise conclude, than that some vast army of Turks or heathens had been sent on purpose to ruin and blot out all marks of Christianity. They spared neither the statues of saints, nor ancient prelates; nor kings, nor benefactors; broke down the tombs and monuments of men famous in their generations, seized the vessels of silver set apart for the holiest use, tore down the most innocent ornaments both within and without, made the houses of prayer, dens of thieves, or stables for cattle. These were the mildest effects of puritan zeal and devotion for Christ; and this was what themselves affected to call a thorough reformation. In this kingdom, those ravages were not so easily seen; for, the people here being too poor to raise such noble temples, the mean ones we had were not defaced, but totally destroyed.
Upon the whole, it is certain, that although God might have found out many other ways to have punished a sinful people, without permitting this rebellion and murder; yet, as the course of the world hath run ever since, we need seek for no other causes of all the publick evils we have hitherto suffered, or may suffer for the future, by the misconduct of princes, or wickedness of the people.
I go on now, upon the third head, to show you to what good uses this solemn day of humiliation may be applied.
First, it may be an instruction to princes themselves, to be careful in the choice of those who are their advisers in matters of law. All the judges of England, except one or two, advised the king, that he might legally raise money upon the subjects for building of ships, without consent of parliament; which, as it was the greatest oversight of his reign, so it proved the principal foundation of all his misfortunes. Princes may likewise learn from hence, not to sacrifice a faithful servant to the rage of a faction; nor to trust any body of men with a greater share of power than the laws of the land have appointed them, much less to deposit it in their hands until they shall please to restore it.
Secondly, By bringing to mind the tragedy of this day, and the consequences that have arisen from it, we shall be convinced how necessary it is for those in power to curb in season all such unruly spirits as desire to introduce new doctrines and discipline in the church, or new forms of government in the state. Those wicked puritans began, in queen Elizabeth's time, to quarrel only with surplices and other habits, with the ring in matrimony, the cross in baptism, and the like; thence they went on to farther matters of higher importance; and at last, they must needs have the whole government of the church dissolved. This great work they compassed, first, by depriving the bishops of their seats in parliament: then they abolished the whole order; and at last, which was their original design, they seized on all the church lands, and divided the spoil among themselves, and, like Jeroboam, made priests of the very dregs of the people. This was their way of reforming the church. As to the civil government, you have already heard how they modelled it, upon the murder of their king, and discarding the nobility. Yet, clearly to show what a Babel they had built, after twelve years trial and twenty several sorts of government, the nation, grown weary of their tyranny, was forced to call in the son of him whom those reformers had sacrificed. And thus were Simeon and Levi divided in Jacob, and scattered in Israel.
Thirdly, Although the successors of these puritans, I mean our present dissenters, do not think fit to observe this day of humiliation; yet it would be very proper in them, upon some occasions, to renounce, in a publick manner, those principles upon which their predecessors acted; and it will be more prudent in them to do so, because those very puritans, of whom ours are followers, found, by experience, that after they had overturned the church and state, murdered their king, and were projecting what they called a kingdom of the saints, they were cheated of the power and possessions they only panted after, by an upstart sect of religion that grew out of their own bowels, who subjected them to one tyrant, while they were endeavouring to set up a thousand.
Fourthly, those who profess to be followers of our church established, and yet presume in discourse to justify or excuse that rebellion and murder of the king, ought to consider how utterly contrary all such opinions are to the doctrine of Christ and his apostles, as well as to the articles of our church, and to the preaching and practice of its true professors for above a hundred years. Of late times indeed, and I speak it with grief of heart, we have heard even sermons of a strange nature: although reason would make one think it a very unaccountable way of procuring favour under a monarchy, by palliating and lessening the guilt of those who murdered the best of kings in cold blood, and, for a time, destroyed the very monarchy itself. Pray God, we may never more hear such doctrine fiom the pulpit, nor have it scattered about in print, to poison the people!
Fifthly, Some general knowledge of this horrid rebellion and murder, with the consequences they had upon the nations, may be a warning to our people, not to believe a lie, and to mistrust those deluding spirits, who, under pretence of a purer and more reformed religion, would lead them from their duty to God and the laws. Politicians may say what they please; but it is no hard thing at all for the meanest person, who hath common understanding, to know whether he be well or ill governed. If he be freely allowed to follow his trade and calling; if he be secure in his property, and hath the benefit of the law to defend himself against injustice and oppression; if his religion be different from that of his country, and the government think fit to tolerate it; (which he may be very secure of, let it be what it will) he ought to be fully satisfied, and give no offence, by writing or discourse, to the worship established, as the dissenting preachers are too apt to do. But, if he hath any new visions of his own, it is his duty to be quiet, and possess them in silence, without disturbing the community by a furious zeal for making proselytes. This was the folly and madness of those ancient puritan fanaticks: they must needs overturn Heaven and earth, violate all the laws of God and man, make their country a field of blood, to propagate whatever wild or wicked opinions came into their heads, declaring all their absurdities and blasphemies to proceed from the Holy Ghost.
To conclude this head. In answer to that objection of keeping up animosity and hatred between protestants, by the observation of this day; if there be any sect, or sort of people among us, who profess the same principles in religion and government which those puritan rebels put in practice, I think it is the interest of all those who love the church and king, to keep up as strong a party against them as possible, until they shall, in a body, renounce all those wicked opinions upon which their predecessors acted, to the disgrace of Christianity, and the perpetual infamy of the English nation.
When we accuse the papists of the horrid doctrine, "that no faith ought to be kept with hereticks;" they deny it to a man: and yet we justly think it dangerous to trust them, because we know their actions have been sometimes suitable to that opinion. But the followers of those who beheaded the martyr, have not yet renounced their principles; and till they do, they may be justly suspected; neither will the bare name of protestants set them right: for, surely, Christ requires more from us than a profession of hating popery, which a Turk or an atheist may do as well as a protestant.
If an enslaved people should recover their liberty, from a tyrannical power of any sort, who could blame them for commemorating their deliverance by a day of joy and thanksgiving? And doth not the destruction of a church, a king, and three kingdoms, by the artifices, hypocrisy, and cruelty, of a wicked race of soldiers and preachers, and other sons of Belial, equally require a solemn time of humiliation; especially since the consequences of that bloody scene still continue, as I have already shown, in their effects upon us?
Thus I have done with the three heads I proposed to discourse on. But, before I conclude, I must give a caution to those who hear me, that they may not think I am pleading for absolute unlimited power in any one man. It is true, all power is from God: and, as the apostle says, "The powers that be are ordained of God;" but this is in the same sense that all we have is from God, our food and raiment, and whatever possession we hold by lawful means. Nothing can be meant in those or any other words of Scripture, to justify tyrannical power, or the savage cruelties of those heathen emperors who lived in the time of the apostles. And so St. Paul concludes, "The powers that be are ordained of God:" for what? why, "for the punishment of evil doers, and the praise, the reward of them that do well." There is no more inward value in the greatest emperor, than in the meanest of his subjects: his body is composed of the same substance, the same parts, and with the same or greater infirmities: his education is generally worse, by flattery, and idleness, and luxury, and those evil disposinons that early power is apt to give. It is therefore against common sense, that his private personal interest, or pleasure, should be put in the balance with the safety of millions; every one of which is equal by nature, equal in the sight of God, equally capable of salvation: and it is for their sakes, not his own, that he is entrusted with the government over them. He hath as high trust as can safely be reposed in one man, and if he discharge it as he ought, he deserves all the honour and duty that a mortal may be allowed to receive. His personal failings we have nothing to do with; and errours in government are to be imputed to his ministers in the state. To what height those errours may be suffered to proceed, is not the business of this day, or this place, or of my function, to determine. When oppressions grow too great and universal to be born, nature or necessity may find a remedy. But, if a private person reasonably expects pardon, upon his amendment, for all faults that are not capital; it would be a hard condition indeed, not to give the same allowance to a prince; who must see with other men's eyes, and hear with other men's ears, which are often wilfully blind and deaf. Such was the condition of the martyr; and is so, in some degree, of all other princes. Yet, this we may justly say in defence of the common people in all civilized nations, that it must be a very bad government indeed, where the body of the subjects will not rather choose to live in peace and obedience, than take up arms on pretence of faults in the administration, unless where the vulgar are deluded by false preachers to grow fond of new visions and fancies in religion; which, managed by dextrous men, for sinister ends of malice, envy, or ambition, have often made whole nations run mad. This was exactly the case in the whole progress of that great rebellion, and the murder of king Charles I. But the late revolution under the prince of Orange, was occasioned by a proceeding directly contrary, the oppression and injustice there beginning from the throne: for that unhappy prince, king James II, did not only invade our laws and liberties, but would have forced a false religion upon his subjects, for which he was deservedly rejected, since there could be no other remedy found, or at least agreed on. But, under the blessed martyr, the deluded people would have forced many false religions, not only on their fellow-subjects, but even upon their sovereign himself, and at the same time invaded all his undoubted rights; and because he would not comply, raised a horrid rebellion, wherein, by the permission of God, they prevailed, and put their sovereign to death, like a common criminal, in the face of the world.
Therefore, those who seem to think they cannot otherwise justify the late revolution, and the change of the succession, than by lessening the guilt of the puritans, do certainly put the greatest affront imaginable upon the present powers, by supposing any relation or resemblance between that rebellion and the late revolution; and, consequently, that the present establishment is to be defended by the same arguments which those usurpers made use of, who, to obtain their tyranny, trampled under foot all the laws both of God and man.
One great design of my discourse was, to give you warning against running into either extreme of two bad opinions, with relation to obedience. As kings are called gods upon earth; so some would allow them an equal power with God, over all laws and ordinances; and that the liberty, and property, and life, and religion of the subject, depended wholly upon the breath of the prince; which however, I hope, was never meant by those who pleaded for passive obedience. And this opinion hath not been confined to that party which was first charged with it; but hath some times gone over to the other, to serve many an evil turn of interest or ambition; who have been as ready to enlarge prerogative, where they could find their own account, as the highest maintainers of it.
On the other side, some look upon kings as answerable for every mistake or omission in government, and bound to comply with the most unreasonable demands of an unquiet faction; which was the case of those who persecuted the blessed martyr of this day from his throne to the scaffold.
Between these two extremes, it is easy, from what hath been said, to choose a middle: to be good and loyal subjects; yet, according to your power, faithful assertors of your religion and liberties: to avoid all broachers and preachers of newfangled doctrines in the church: to be strict observers of the laws, which cannot be justly taken from you without your own consent: in short, "to obey God and the king, and meddle not with those who are given to change."
Which that you may all do, &c.