If I have desired or delighted in the wofull day of my Kingdoms calamities, If I have not earnestly studied, and faithfully endeavoured the preventing and composing of these bloody Distractions; then let thy hand be against me and my Fathers House. O Lord thou seest I have enemies enough of men; as I need not, so should I not dare thus to imprecate thy curse on me and mine, if my Conscience did not witnesse my integrity, which thou, O Lord, knowest right well. But I trust not to my own merit, but thy mercies; spare us, O Lord, and be not angry with us for ever.
13. Upon the calling in of the Scots, and their Comming.
T He Scots are a Nation, upon whom I have not onely common ties of Nature, Soveraignty, and Bounty, with My Father of blessed memory; but also speciall and late obligations of favours, having gratified the active Spirits among them so far, that I seemed to many to prefer the desires of that party, before My own interest and honor. But, I see, Royall bountie emboldens some men to ask, and act beyond all bounds of modesty and gratitude.
My charity, and Act of Pacification, forbids Me to reflect on former passages, wherin I shal ever be far from letting any mans ingratitude, or inconstancy, make me repent of what I granted them for the publique good: I pray God it may so prove.
The coming again of that Party into England, with an Army only to conforme this Church to their late New model, cannot but seem as unreasonable, as they would have thought the same measure offered from hence to themselves.
Other errand I could never understand, they had, (besides those common and vulgar flourishes for Religion and Liberty) save only to confirme the Presbyterian Copy they had set, by making this Church to write after them, though it were in bloudy Characters.
Which design and end, whether it will justifie the use of such violent means, before the divine Justice, I leave to their Consciences to judge, who have already felt the misery of the means, but not reaped the benefit of the end, either in this Kingdom, or that.