SIR EDWARD DEERINGS Third SPEECH In PARLIAMENT, 1640.

THIS Morning is designed for the consideration of the late Cannons, and the former; and of that which the Clergy have miscalled a benevolence, I shall for the present, onely touch the first of them, and that is the Roman Velites, who did use to begin the Battayle: so shall I but velita•de, and skirmish, whilst the mayne Battayle is setting forwards.

The POPE, as they say, hath a triple Crowne, answerable thereunto; and to sup∣port it, he pretendeth to have a threefold Law.

1. The first that is Ius divinum, Episcopa∣cy Page  10 by Divine Right: and this he would have you thinke to be the Crowne next his head, which doth circle and secure his power, our Bishops have in an unlucky time entred their Plea, and presented their title to this Crown, Episcopacy, by Divine Right.

2. The second is Ius humanum Constantij donativum, the guift of Indulgent Princes tem∣porall power; this Law belongs to his mid∣dle or second Crowne, this is already plea∣ded for, by our Prelates in Print.

These two Crownes being already obtai∣ned (He the POPE) Creates and makes the third himselfe, and sets it highest upon the top: This Crowne also hath its Law, and that is Ius canonicum, the Canon Law of more use un to his Popeship, if once admitted then both the other. Just so our Prelates from the pretended Divinity of their Epis∣copacy, and from the temporall power, gran∣ted by our Princes, would now oberude a new Common Law upon us: They have char∣ged the Commons to the full, and never feare∣ing they would requoyle into a Parliament, they have rammed a prodigious ungodly Oath into them. The Illegality, and Inva∣lidity of these Cannons, is manifested by one short question, (vizt.) what do you call the meeting wherein they were made?

Mr Speaker, who can frame an Argument aright, unlesse he can tell against what he is to argue?

Page  11 Will you confute the Convocation-house? they were a holy Synod: will you argue a∣gainst their Synod? they were Commissio∣ners, will you dispute their Commission? they will mingle all power together, and perhaps answer, they were something else that we neither knew, nor imagined, unlesse they would unriddle themselves, and owne what they were, we may prosecute non conclu∣dent Arguments.

Mr. Speaker, I have conferred with some of the founders of those Cannons, but I pro∣fesse here, that I could never yet meet with any one of that Assembly, who could well answere to that first question of the Cate∣chisme, What is your name? Alas, they were parted before they knew what they were, when they were together.

The summe of all the severall answers that I have received, do altogether amount unto this: They were a Convocationall, Synodi∣call Assembly of Commissioners: Indeed a threefold Chaemera, a Monster to our Laws, a Cerberus to our Religion. A strange Com∣mission, where no Commissioners name is to be found! A strange Convocation, that lived when the Parliament was dead. A strange holy Synod, when the one part never saw nor conferred with the other.

But indeed, there needed no conference, if it be true of these Cannons which I read of Page  12 the former, quis nescit, Canones Lambe thae for∣mari priusquam in Synodo ventilentur?

Well Mr. Speaker, they have Innovated upon us; we may say, It is Lextalionis to inno∣vate upon them, and so I hope we shortly shall doe.

In the meane time my humble motion is, that every member of that Assembly, who voted their Canons, may come severally to the Barre of this House, with a Booke of Can∣nons in his hand, and there unlesse he can an∣swere that Catechisme question, as I called it, better then I expect he can, concept is verbis, in such expresse termes as this Honourable House shall then think fit, he shall abjure his owne Issue, and be commanded to give fire to his owne Cannons.

And this motion I take to be Just.