it is obvious to say that it is a Solecism and Non-sense to affirm that any one is a man's Heir or Successor while himself lives for the Successor only commences such at his Predecessor's death And therefore he that intentionally swears Allegeance to the former in the life-time of the latter is in plain terms a Traytor For the plain intent and meaning of the Oath is no more than this That seeing in Monarchies that are hereditary there is no Interregnum but upon the death of the present Soveraign his Successor is immediately invested in his power it is prudently provided by this Oath that the Subjects Allegeance shall not be suspended till the new Soveraign's Coronation that thereby the mutual stipulation might be renewed but as the Heir 's entring upon the Gevernment does imply that he accepts it upon the same conditions as his Predecessor held it so does this Oath as effectually bind the Subject before the Coronation as after And hereby are very great hazards and inconveniences prevented for Multa cadunt inter calicem supremaque labra and the Coronation being usually perform'd with great pomp and ceremony many accidents may happen before all things can be prepared for the Solemnity that may require the utmost service of the people and therefore 't is requisite they should in the mean time be under his command But now all the question is Whether such a particular man has so unalterable a right to be such a ones Heir that no Crime can forfeit that right no Power annul it What the Crime in our present case is we should better have known if the hasty dissolution of so many Parliaments and a Noli prosequi had not hindred But that we may resolve this Query let us make a Fiction of Case Suppose the present King and his Ancestors for several Generations sincere and hearty professors of the Protestant Religion swearing at their Coronation that they will defend and protect it as the most considerable branch of the Law of the Land And suppose him that expects to be Heir perverted from this to the Popish Religion notwithstanding the examples of his Ancestors and the Commands of his Martyr'd Father to the contrary Suppose his principal Servant and greatest Confident braging of the apparent likelihood of rooting out this pestilent Northern Heresie and of the zeal of his Master in the Cause declaring that his Master's and a Neighbouring Monarch's Interest the most dangerous enemy to his Country are inseparable Suppose this Confident also actually engag'd in contriving the Murther of the present Monarch to hasten his Master's coming to the Crown Supposing all this we can hardly imagine a Crime to be blacker or a person more obnoxious to a suspicion of designing the subversion of the establisht Religion and in it of the Government if ever he should be seated in the Throne So that if any Crimes can be a sufficient cause of Exclusion or if any person can be put by his pretensions to the Crown these are the Crimes and this is the person that demerit it And now let us consider whether a Parliament have not a power to inflict such a punishment on such offences It is from the Laws enacted by Parliament that such a Fact has such a punishment awarded to it That Felonies are punished with Death as well as Murder though it be otherwise in many Countries and also by the Divine Law That Words without any other Overt Act are as Treasonable and render the Speakers liable to the same death and like forfeit of Estate as actual Assassinating the King would do The Parliament can make saying that which in the nature of the thing is not impossible to be true to be Treason The King alone to those offences that by the Law deserve death can appoint banishment or perpetual imprisonment c. if they respect himself only but if the people be interested then can He with the two Houses inflict what punishment they please They can Attaint any man or take off the Attainder as they see good They can legitimate a Bastard or illegitimate one that is born in lawful Wedlock Of both we have Instances in Q. Mary and Q. Elizabeth for both of them in 28 H. 8. were declared illegitimate whereas one of them must needs be legitimate and in 35 H. 8. they were both of them rendred inheritable to the Crown which must needs be as much as legitimate though one of them must necessarily be illegitimate the latter being born while the former's Mother was living For if according to the determination of the Universities domestick and foreign the Brother by the Law of God might not Marry the Relict of his Brother then King Henry's Marriage with Queen Mary's Mother that had been his elder Brother Prince Arthur's Wife was unlawful and consequently null in it self ab initio before the declaration of it in Parliament in Ann. 24. of his Reign or if it was not unlawful nor null then must his Marriage with Queen Elizabeths Mother be certainly unlawful and consequently Queen Elizabeth illegitimate They can Divorce a man from his Wife for other causes than Adultery so that the Parties shall be at liberty to Marry others Non obstante our Saviour's declaration as to the Jewish Oeconomy yea they can and have granted such a power to Doctors Commons that Impotency in the Man shall be a sufficient cause for divorce or a nullity as we had an Instance about four years ago in one Rowley and Mrs Pitman his wife And by the way if impotency be a sufficient cause for dissolving the sacred tye of Marriage because the main end of Marriage the propagating mankind is thereby frustrated it may be equally reasonable to debar such an one the Espousal of the Government as 't is notorious before hand is perverted to an utter incapacity of answering the ends of it And on the other side the Parliament can grant a divorce if the Woman be incapable of generation and so was Henry the eighth in the 32 year of his Reign divorced from his Queen the Lady Anne of Cleve who survived to the fourth year of Queen Mary but the King married again within little more than a month after this divorce But to proceed The two Houses can give away the whole Kingdom to the King so as to make him sole possessor of all and He and they can dispose of or alienate the Crown-lands or any branch of the King's Revenue as they please They can banish any man and make him in worse condition than an Alien and on the other hand can naturalize any Foreigner In a word they have an unbounded absolute dominion over the Lives Liberties and Estates of any subject in the Kingdom and such is every one but the King himself We have had Instances of Queens being beheaded in relation to which we shall not need to inquire whether they were really guilty of the Crimes laid to their charge 't is sufficient to observe that
preservation of our Religion Liberties and Properties that were all lately like to have been swallowed up in monstrous confusions if the special Spirit of God had not inspired Your Heart to prevent it Here not to mention the imputation of Enthusiasm cast upon His Majesty which such a Master of Reason would be asham'd to pretend to what is the scope of both these Addresses but to work His Majesty into an apprehension of Treasonable and Rebellious Designs against His Person and the Government carried on by Two Parliaments than which none ever exprest a greater care and providence for the preservation of both This is the only saving Card that the men of this Interest have to play to make the King jealous and fearful of his Parliaments and consequently to breed a diffidence in them of Him that the foundations of the Government being renderd thus unsteady they may upon a favourable juncture overturn it and erect their own new Model And to accomplish this design 't is not only the method of these whiffling Boroughs already mentioned and of others I might recite as Weymouth Thetford c. but of deeper heads The University of Cambridge it self reflecting on these Parliaments speaks of them in these terms That factious and malicious men have not proceeded to plunder and sequestration to violate our Chapels rifle our Libraries and empty our Colledges as once they did next to the over-ruling providence of God is only due to the Royal care and prudence of Your sacred Majesty who gave so seasonable a check to their arbitrary and insolent undertaking What could be spoken more malicious or what if his Majesty could be induc'd to believe it true could possibly tempt him more to resolve never to put himself into the danger of the like Assembly And that we need not question their desire and design os cashiering Parliaments they take upon themselves a power of repealing an Act of Parliament for they make bold to affirm That no Religion no LAW no fault or forfeiture can alter the Succession whereas the Statute of 13 Eliz. has made it Treason to affirm that the LAWS and Statutes made in Parliament do not bind the Right of the Crown and the descent limitation inheritance and governance thereof It were needless to recite the like assertions in other Addresses for these are enow to convince any man of the design that is not engag'd in it and those that are will never be convinc'd but by a Parliament which in due time may perswade them to recant And to make his Majesty more favourable to their purpose and lest his Wants and necessities should be stronger Arguments to Him for assembling a Parliament the only Legal means of supplying them than their Insinuations for staving him from it they first accuse the late Sessions for unreasonably obstructing his Majesties demands of supplies of mony so Northumberland and then to put Him into a readier method of furnishing himself the County Palatine of Durham in their late Anti-Associations as they call it thus express themselves And that we may not only verbally express our Loyalty we do as in Duty and Allegiance bound give this Assurance That our Lives and Fortunes sha l be ready and that we will CONTRIBVTE MONEY to our uttermost Abilities when ever your Majesties occasions shall require No mention at all of a Parliament but both by the words and the whole scope and drift of this Address it is plain they mean a voluntary Contribution whenever His Majesty shall signifie that his occasions require it Thus by these few passages we see how industriously they are engaged in carrying on the leading half of the Popish Plot viz. Arbitrary Government we shall next inquire what assistance they afford the following half to wit the extirpating the Protestant Religion and introducing of Popery And I doubt not but to make it appear they are thorough pac'd in this also In the Parliament that began Octob. 21. 1680. there were two Bills that had each two Readings and were Committed upon the debate of the House the one for Uniting of his Majesties Protestant Subjects the other for exempting his Majestie 's Protestant Subjects dissenting from the Church of England from the Penalties of certain Laws whether they would have passed or no is uncertain however they were quash'd by the Prorogation of the Parliament But there was a third Bill which passed both Houses intitled An Act for the Repeal of a Statute made in the thirty fifth year of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth As the late Long Parliament repealed the Statute de Haeretico comburendo for fear if Popery should once again get the upper hand it would be executed upon Protestants as it was in Queen Marys daies so this present Parliament foreseeing that this Act of Queen Elizabeth that was made against the Prownists and Barrowists of those daies as appears in the Journals of Parliament of that Queen lately published by Mr. Starkey was likely to be perverted to the ruin of the Estates Liberties and it might be Lives of Protestants in the daies of a Popish Successor and thinking it prudent to provide even against the present dangers from the Common Enemy the Papists by bearing a gentler hand over the dissenting Protestants on whom this Act was in part executed and thereby uniting them more firmly in Interest and Affection with the Church of England I say upon these considerations this present Parl. thought fit to repeal that Act of 35 Eliz. But at the end of the Sessions when this Bill should have been presented with the others that were expedited unto his Majesty for his approbation and passing it into an Act there was no fight or tydings of it By whose default it was thus smother'd there has been no opportunity since to find out However some of our late Addressers throw the odium of it upon his Majesty telling him That he was unwilling to pass his Royal Assent to any Act which may repeal that of 35 Eliz. Vide Kents Address How these Gentlemen come to understand the King's mind in this case I know not Sure I am it is very unlikely but his Majesty would have passed this Bill recommended with the concurrent advice and consent of both Lords and Commons if it had been tendred to Him seeing he has alwaies profest so great a regard to tender Consciences and himself from his own motion granted them an Indulgence against this and several other Acts of Parliament which every one may remember how difficultly he was prevailed with by the Parliament to retract saying he was resolved to stand by it But these men would have it believ'd that He 's now otherwise inclin'd and besides if their Insinuations of his Majesties command to stifle it were true it were palpable that He had shaken the very Constitution of Parliaments according to which all Bills that have past both Houses ought to be presented to his Majesty But no truly Loyal Subject will believe so gracious a King
is without them They will profess their desires of an Accommodation though they certainly know that if such a thing ever be Protestantism must be swallowed up in Popery for the Church of Rome as such cannot recede from one tittle of their present Confession unless they would let go the very foundation of it their pretence to Infallibility In a word shew me the Tory Clergy or Lay that will not call the Parliament a Faction esteem the D. a Saint affirm the Scarcrow of Schism upon the Punctilio's of Ceremonies to be a greater evil than any at this Day tolerated in the Church of Rome and the five Points agreed upon at the Synod of Dort more destructive doctrine than any of the Conventicle at Trent I will not descend to the Speeches or actions of particular persons for as that would be tedious so I should think my self injurious to charge upon the whole Gang the Extravagancies of a few But the affirmations opinions and demeanour that I have enumerated and described are so common to all of them that I have conversed with and are so truely and properly characteristical that none can call me unjust or say that I have misrepresented them Upon the whole matter therefore I appeal to the judgment of any unprejudic'd man whether the persons I have been speaking of be not designing enemies of the Power Priviledges and Freedom of English Parliaments and whether from their transport of joy at the likelihood of a Popish Successor c. they be not apparently Well-wishers unto Popery It remains that we speak a word or two of the Bill of Association We observed above that when the Bill of Exclusion was rejected by the Lords there was another agreed by the Commons to be brought in Dec. 15. 80. for the Associating of all his Majesties Protestant subjects for the safety of his Majesties person the defence of the Protestant Religion c. and for the preventing the Duke of York or any Papist from succeeding to the Crown And about five dayes after in an Address to his Majesty they humbly petition him That when a Bill should be tendred to his Majesty in a Parliamentary way to disable the Duke of York from inheriting the Crown his Majesty would give his Royal Assent thereto And as necessary to fortifie and defend the same that his Majesty will likewise be graciously pleased to Assent to an Act whereby his Majesties Protestant subjects may be enabled to ASSOCIATE themselves for the defence of his Majestie 's person the Protestant Religion and the security of His Kingdoms Let any man judge whether these were not as calm orderly and warrantable steps towards an Association as any could be devised And indeed our Abhorrers for all their Clamours against Associations have not the face to say any thing against these proceedings Only they cry they will enter into none without his Majesties consent as if the Parliament had told the King they would enter into one whether He would or not But they think they have got a better pretence for decrying and abhorring them than these motions towards one in the Parliament and that is the model of one said to be found in the E. of Shaftsbury's Closet Now though I doubt not but in convenient time it will be made out as clear as a Negative can be that that paper was not found there yet for discourses sake we will suppose that it was And then I say that if there were any thing contained in it that were of it self Treasonable I know not how it would have affected my Lord Shaftsbury unless it had appeared either to have been of my Lords hand-writing or that he had tender'd it to be subscrib'd by any one or at least it had been prov'd that my Lord knew of its being there None of which has been nor I am confident can be made out by any one And if my Lord at whose door they lay it be no more concerned in it there is no colour of reason in the world to charge I know not what others for consenting to it So that we have a great cry and a little wool The Mystery of Abhorrence therefore lies here As the former Addresses were calculated against the Bill of Exclusion so the late Abhorrences against the Bill of Association that was to back it And as both these Bills aimed at nothing else but the safety and defence of his Majesties person and the Protestant Religion and the security of these Kingdoms by means which the House of Commons in their great Wisdoms thought lawful and necessary for those ends So our Addressers and Abhorrers seem to aim at the clean contrary For if the Papists do see the way made plain for a Popish Successor as these Gentlemen endeavour to make it his Majesties most sacred person is in continual danger of being assasinated by the desperate Instruments of the Popish Faction which if once effected which the good God forbid what then will become of the Protestant Religion and the welfare of these Kingdoms I tremble to contemplate But I would have all Papists to know that we are not yet scared out of our wits with the noise of Abhorrences nor would I have them over-confident of carrying the day for all the interest they have made When Queen Elizabeth with her Protestant Subjects were in like danger from the Q. of Scots and her Traiterous Faction 27 Eliz. as his present Majesty with the like subjects now are from a Parallel we find very great numbers of the best quality spontaneously entring into an Association putting thereto their hands and Seals wherein If her Majesty should come to an untimely death they did not only bind themselves never to allow accept or favour any such pretended Successor BY whom or FOR whom any such detestable Act should be Attempted or Committed as unworthy of all Government in any Christian Realm or Civil State But did also further protest to persecute such person and persons to death with their joynt and particular Forces and to act the utmost revenge upon them that by any means they or any of them could devise or do or cause to be devised and done for their utter overthrow and extirpation And if the Queen of Scots and her Faction should only attempt any Act counsel or consent to any thing that should tend to the harm of her Majesties Royal person they would with their joint and particular Forces withstand offend and pursue as well by force of Arms as by all other means of revenge all such persons of what state soever and their Abettors and never desist from all manner of pursuit against them to the utter extermination of them their Councellors and Abettors Now it does not at all appear that the Queens pleasure was consulted in this affair but that the Associators did it purely of their own heads for in those dayes there was that mutual confidence betwixt Prince and people that Loyal subjects never feared the incurring the charge of Treason for contriving and using all possible means for the preservation of their Sovereign but contrarily when this Association was turned into an Act of Parliament soon after intitled An Act for provision to be made for the surety of the Queens Majesties most Royal person c. these Associators are therein styled Her Majesties good and faithful Subjects and are acknowledged to have done it in the name of God and with the testimonies of good consciences But I urge not this as if any Association were to be entred into against the Sovereigns mind for it is one thing to do a thing without his Pleasure first known and another to do it against the signification of it However the Association proposed in Parliament that occasioned this discourse was so far from being caried on against the King's mind that we see they petition'd Him for his assent to it before they had made any progress in it which as I do not know that he has granted so neither that he has deny'd To be short As I will not take up Arms without the King's Commission nor enter into any Association to commence in his life-time against his consent So I do protest as I doubt not many thousands will do with me that if his Majesty shall come by any untimely and violent death or shall be forced to a Resignation which is a Political death He BY whom or FOR whom such untimely death shall be procured or such Resignation extorted Shall not Reign over me For I cannot think any man that has one drop of Royal bloud in his Veins so much incapacitated for the Crown as such a Traytor FINIS