Now no other command
was delivered but that all things should conduce to order and
edification.
Ib. p. 66.
And therefore how they could refuse to receive the King, till he
consented to take the Covenant, I know not, unless the taking of the
Covenant had been a condition on which he was to receive his crown by
the laws or fundamental constitutions of the kingdom, which none
pretendeth. Nor know I by what power they can add anything to the
Coronation Oath or Covenant, which by his ancestors was to be taken,
without his own consent.
And pray, how and by whom were the Coronation Oaths first imposed? The
Scottish nation in 1650 had the same right to make a bargain with the
claimant of their throne as their ancestors had. It is strange that
Baxter should not have seen that his objections would apply to our
'Magna Charta'. So he talks of the "fundamental constitutions," just as
if these had been aboriginal or rather 'sans' origin, and not as indeed
they were extorted and bargained for by the people. But throughout it is
plain that Baxter repeated, but never appropriated, the distinction
between the King as the executive power, and as the individual
functionary. What obligation lay on the Scottish Parliament and Church
to consult the man Charles Stuart's personal likes and dislikes? The
Oath was to be taken by him as their King. Doubtless, he equally
disliked the whole Protestant interest; and if the Tories and Church of
England Jacobites of a later day had recalled James II.
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