Table would therefore be greater, if that were possible (Epistle of James), because they preclude obedience to the first table,-nay, heap the crime of hypocrisy on the pretence to obedience.

Written on the blank page at the end of the Volume.
Eighth Tract, 1649.

Justice upon the Remonstrance of the Army, by William Sedgwick-highly interesting. I must make myself better acquainted with this W. Sedgwick, who re-excites the regret I have so often felt, that a History of Charles I., the Republic, and Protectorate, were not written with especial reference to the numberless Pamphlets, Books, &c., then published, or while yet there is time.

But, alas! every year destroys its quota; the noble, probably unique, collection of Sir W. Lawson's Predecessor, left out of spite to the Butler, lasted the Grocers, Chandlers, and Druggists of Penrith and Kendal during a destruction of 20 years and more!-W.S. appears an instance of an Independent sublimated into a theosophic Behmenist, greatly to the improvement of his political insight at least. Several passages on the Spirit of Fear, as symptomatic of hollowness and weakness, and the contrary spirit of co-inherence, are almost sublime. Sedgwick's views of immortality seem, however, to coincide with those of Spinoza, rather than with Behmen's. See page 25, last paragraph, and the three or four following pages.

NOTES WRITTEN IN A VOLUME OF TRACTS RELATING TO THE CIVIL WARS.

England's Dust and Ashes raked up; or, the King and People beguiled.

To thee, Reader.

Yet now for human ends, thou seest we are forced to forsake the Almighty, to deny the blessed conduct of His most holy Word, and turn our belief to a new piece of Parliament divinity, which compels to pay no tribute to Cæsar, but rather take violently from him his own inheritance and royal patrimony, while he refuses to be under command.

The King (which in the New Testament ought to have been translated Emperor) means the Supreme Power, in whomever placed. In England it was placed in the King and two Houses of Parliament. The King separately from these was no more than a Constable without a warrant.

The Preface of the same Tract.

The King therefore cannot be capable of constraint from his vassals; for whom, if they miscarry for want of temper at his correction, he is said, in a qualified sense, to be generally accountable; which could by no means be, if his power were not above all men, and his dominion absolute.

Here we have an open avowal of arbitrary monarchy, which Charles I. encouraged in his followers, while he disavowed it in the public papers, written for him and in his name, but with his full consent and authority, by Clarendon, Falkland and Culpepper.

Written on the blank leaf at the end of the Volume. In all questions of wide and deep interest it is scarcely less than a fatal Necessity, that the best cause should be the worst defended; the consequence of which is, the temporary victory of the false and the superficial, and its establishment in the chair of learned as well as popular opinion. The cause is in the instinct of the mind to aim at the highest in the first instance-and hence with imperfect means, and in the absence of all the main conditions of its attainment-the Cherub's aim-the Child's or Savage's wishes, passions, prejudices-Alchemy, Astrology. But the remark was intended chiefly in reference to the Nominalist's controversy with, and temporary (though still continuing) victory over the Realists in the fifteenth century.

NOTE ON HAYLEY'S LIFE OF MILTON.*

Page 101.

The odium which the President [Bradshaw] justly incurred in the trial of Charles.

Why justly? What would the contemptible Martyr-worshippers (who yearly apply to this fraudulent would-be-Despot the most awful phrases of holy writ concerning the Saviour of Mankind, concerning the Incarnate Word, that is with God, and is God, in a cento of ingenious blasphemy that has no parallel in the annals of impious adulation) what

* 4to. 1796.

would even these men have? Can they, as men, expect that Bradshaw and his Peers should give sentence against the Parliament and Armies of England, as guilty of all the blood that had been shed as Rebels and Murderers! Yet there was no other alternative. That he and his Peers were influenced by Cromwell is a gross calumny, sufficiently refuted by their after lives and by their death hours, and has been amply falsified by Mrs. Hutchinson in her incomparable Life of her incomparable Husband Colonel Hutchinson. O! that I might have such an action to remember on my Death-bed. The only enviable part of Charles's fate and life is that his name is connected with the greatest names of ancient or modern times-Qui cum victus erat, tantis certâsse feratur.

NOTES ON THE ROYALIST'S DEFENCE, VINDICATING THE KING'S PROCEEDINGS IN THE LATE WAR MADE AGAINST HIM.

The Epistle to the Reader.

Now amongst those, he who hath once got the reputation of an Antiquary, and hath accustomed himself to discourse of things out of the common road, ipso facto, is master of this art. It is then but making use of some dull expressions found in an old worm-eaten Record, selecting the mistaken opinions of some particular judge's obiter, delivered in arguments, or some dark sentences taken out of a rotten manuscript. And if any printed book be deigned the mentioning, it must not be the known authentic authors, reporting the resolutions of the Courts of Justice, nor such as show the common and constant practice of the kingdom, which is the Law itself, but some antiquated thing, whose

author is unknown, and his meaning is obscure. These rules being observed, his work is done; the people, observing this Cynic's discourse to be different from other men, presently conclude him to be far more learned than his fellow lawyers, and gaze upon him as an infallible guide.

Palpably a sneer at Selden.

Ibid.

And the King on the other side, with wonderful expressions of loyalty (even by the same Serpent) ["this Parliament"] was told he should be made more glorious than any of his ancestors or predecessors; but the members having thus increased the flame between the King and the subject, and having by these false surmises and cunning dissemblings gulled the people into a belief that whatever the members declared, be it in things either spiritual or temporal, the one was good law, and the other true Gospel; which the members perceiving, they instantly made use thereof, and upon that score voted it a high breach of the privilege of Parliament for any (the Judges, the Courts of Justice, nor the King himself, excepted) either to oppose their commands, or to deny that to be law, which they declared so to be. By which sleight their whole work was finished, for by this the known law was absolutely subverted, and both King and People (for their consciences, their lives, estates, and fortunes) enslaved, to their will and doom.

How strange, if, under the influence of partyspirit, anything can be thought strange, that this Royalist, evidently a man of sense and learning, should have suffered himself to forget, who and what portion of the nation these members were, in the two or three first Parliaments of Charles I.

Vide Clarendon's own confession.