Page:Eikonoklastes - in answer to a book intitl'd Eikon basilike - Milton (1649).djvu/29

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Εικονοκλάστης
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cution to all those that comply'd not with such a form. The like amendment he promises in State; not a stepp furder then his reason and conscience told him was fitt to be desir'd; wishing hee had kept within those bounds, and not suffer'd his own judgement to have bin over-borne in some things, of which things one was the Earle of Straffords execution. And what signifies all this, but that still his resolution was the same, to set up an arbitrary Goverment of his own; and that all Britain was to be ty'd and chain'd to the conscience, judgement, and reason of one Man; as if those gifts had been only his peculiar and Prerogative, intal'd upon him with his fortune to be a King. When as doubtless no man so obstinate, or so much a Tyrant, but professes to be guided by that which he calls his Reason, and his Judgement, though never so corrupted; and pretends also his conscience. In the mean while, for any Parlament or the whole Nation to have either reason, judgement, or conscience, by this rule was altogether in vaine, if it thwarted the Kings will; which was easie for him to call by any other more plausible name. He himself hath many times acknowledg'd to have no right over us but by Law; and by the same Law to govern us: but Law in a Free Nation hath bin ever public reason, the enacted reason of a Parlament; which he denying to enact, denies to govern us by that which ought to be our Law; interposing his own privat reason, which to us is no Law. And thus we find these faire and specious promises, made upon the experience of many hard sufferings, and his most mortifi'd retirements, being throughly sifted, to containe nothing in them much different from his former practices, so cross, and so averse to all his Parlaments, and both the Nations of this Iland. What fruits they could in likelyhood have produc'd in his restorement, is obvious to any prudent foresight.

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