FullReads

KING:
Peace, peace.
Thou ow’st me nothing yet.
[TO LAUD.]
My lord, what say
Those papers?

LAUD:
Your Majesty has ever interposed, 210
In lenity towards your native soil,
Between the heavy vengeance of the Church
And Scotland. Mark the consequence of warming
This brood of northern vipers in your bosom.
The rabble, instructed no doubt 215
By London, Lindsay, Hume, and false Argyll
(For the waves never menace heaven until
Scourged by the wind’s invisible tyranny),
Have in the very temple of the Lord
Done outrage to His chosen ministers. 220
They scorn the liturgy of the Holy Church,
Refuse to obey her canons, and deny
The apostolic power with which the Spirit
Has filled its elect vessels, even from him
Who held the keys with power to loose and bind, 225
To him who now pleads in this royal presence.–
Let ample powers and new instructions be
Sent to the High Commissioners in Scotland.
To death, imprisonment, and confiscation,
Add torture, add the ruin of the kindred 230
Of the offender, add the brand of infamy,
Add mutilation: and if this suffice not,
Unleash the sword and fire, that in their thirst
They may lick up that scum of schismatics.
I laugh at those weak rebels who, desiring 235
What we possess, still prate of Christian peace,
As if those dreadful arbitrating messengers
Which play the part of God ‘twixt right and wrong,
Should be let loose against the innocent sleep
Of templed cities and the smiling fields, 240
For some poor argument of policy
Which touches our own profit or our pride
(Where it indeed were Christian charity
To turn the cheek even to the smiter’s hand):
And, when our great Redeemer, when our God, 245
When He who gave, accepted, and retained
Himself in propitiation of our sins,
Is scorned in His immediate ministry,
With hazard of the inestimable loss
Of all the truth and discipline which is 250
Salvation to the extremest generation
Of men innumerable, they talk of peace!
Such peace as Canaan found, let Scotland now:
For, by that Christ who came to bring a sword,
Not peace, upon the earth, and gave command 255
To His disciples at the Passover
That each should sell his robe and buy a sword,-
Once strip that minister of naked wrath,
And it shall never sleep in peace again
Till Scotland bend or break.

[NOTES:
134-232 Beloved…mutilation 1870; omitted 1824.
237 arbitrating messengers 1870; messengers of wrath 1824.
239 the 1870; omitted 1524.
243-244 Parentheses inserted 1870.
246, 247 When He…sins 1870; omitted 1824.
248 ministry 1870; ministers 1824.
249-52 With…innumerable 1870; omitted 1824.]