follow every Civil Judgment much less the Vncivil Judgment of any Sett of Conspirators and Traitors into whose hand you so liberally and piously dispose it T. B's 2d Lett. p. 19. Eucher I am resolved that no calumnious usage shall storm or transport me into any indecent or uncharitable passion But tho' for my own part I might reject your imputations of disloyalty with scorn and silence yet for your conviction I will calmly remind you that I ever told you that the Estates of this Land are not Judges of the Kings Person who is not under their Power nor in Law subject to them And all that I any where said of their Judgment about the Throne amounts to no more than this that in a state of Anarchy on a King's Desertion or in Arbitration between two or more Competitors the Estates of this Land are the Supream Domestick Judges and Arbiters upon the Tenure of the Sovereignty and the Rights of the Nation in order to Settlement And that in case an irresistible or unresisted Potentate * Sol. Ab. p. 5. enforce himself upon the Nation for a new King and the Subject people cannot help it our Laws in this concur with the Laws and Practice of all Nations in allowing our Estates to determine for us in such Exigencies * Ibid. p. 4. that in extra-ordinary interruptions and convulsions of State our Laws and Constitutions allow the Estates such a King as can actually be had for the time being for which * Ibid. p. 5. I refer to our Histories Acts of Parliament and Judgments of Law under hereditary Kings since the Reformation without any Remonstrance of King Church or State to the contrary and at last to Bishop Overals Convocation Book So that if a Question arise in the disordered Kingdom who is my King to whom my Allegiance is legally payable I refer to their Judgment as the then Supream in all our Civils and if you can assign any Superior or more Legal Judgment to decide and determine such national Questions and Controversies I am content to give up fairly to you And if you can produce any Homilies Articles Canons or Monuments of this Church contrary to these my Positions then I will yield that the Churches Authority as far as that can go upon Civil Questions will lie against me But a mans Eyes shall sooner drop out of his Head than discover any such counter-principles in the publick constitutions of our Church which you would have quoted if you could particularly but since that could not be done 't was very feeble to make such an hollow and causeless noise about it And yet if the Church in Civils had interpreted the Laws contrary to the Judgments of the State she had given a null and incompetent Judgment since we are no Authentick Doctors in these matters nor the Church a Court of Civil Judicature prohibitions always justly lying on her whensoever she admits the Pleas and assumes the Judgment of Civil Causes As to the Rebellion against King Charles the First it comes not near our Case for there was a King actually Regnant who in Parliament had redressed all their Grievances and whose Tenure was indisputable and undisputed the very Rebels owning their Arms to be for King and Parliament But neither was that Rebellion a judicial form of proceeding of both Houses of which only I spake as Authentick in the Actual Vacancy of the Throne and a state of Anarchy but a military one by a divided part of the Houses assuming the Style and Title of the whole Parliament against a King actually Regnant which I had no occasion to mention much less to justifie the Nation having since condemned it by Act of Parliament Nor had it been entred into by the unanimous Vote of both Houses had it obliged as a Law as wanting the Royal Assent of the King then Regnant And the Rights of the Crown and Duties of our Allegiance are still the same tho' Milton will still have Successors to his Villanies arise when their Sovereigns are involved to tamper with popular and seditious humours and ambitions in order to new projected commotions But they who make the Convention to have proceeded on principles of Rebellion contrary to their enacted Judgments that hence they may draw Arguments to whiten the Old and to enflame New Rebellions deserve they and their incendiary Pamphlets to be burnt together Nor need you fear any such consequence from any my Positions as if upon these the Parliaments may change their Kings every Day and thereupon our Oaths For I have asserted no Convention of Estates to be in Name or Thing a Parliament if they mect contrary to the Fundamental Laws of their Constitution And while a King is actually Regnant they * The Triennial Act was not pasied when this was written yet meet sit are prorogued and dissolved at the Kings Order only And this being yet the form of our State no Votes or Bills of the Houses can pass into an Act or Law without the Assent of the King Regnant at whose pleasure they immediately are and are not and so can make no Legal Assembly or publick Change without or against him over whose Person they are neither Lords nor Judges For tho' Causes of the King may come before the Lords and be overruled in Justice to the Subjects Right against which they are brought thither yet this is no more than what we see in other Courts which yet pretend no Sovereignty over the Kings Person by whose Commission they sit in Judgment So far am I from such wicked Principles as Plat-thorns in the Crowns of Kings and set them in the most unsupportable Bondage that Art or Ill-nature can contrive but withal provoke great spirited and designing Princes to seek avenues to an Arbitrary Power who would have gladly been contented with a regular and equal Sovereignty if they could have been secured in it from the fears and incentives of popular insolence But to return from this Digression if a King thro' any fear or cause whatsoever utterly deserts his Kingdoms and leaves all in Anarchy and Confusion that the Estates of the Land if they can should then Convene and settle the Nation the best way they can is so far from Rebellion that it is most certainly both their Priviledge and their Duty And if they are first to determin our Settlement I am sure the Churches Loyalty is to follow their Judgment except we challenge an Appeal from them to the Church to ratifie or vacate our Civil Constitutions And if you call this Duty of Submission to their Civil Settlements implicit Faith in the Parliament it will be prone to retort that you challenge an implicit Faith in the Church and that in matters not Ecclesiastical in a latitude more Exorbitant than any Pretensions of the Church of Rome But the Truth is our Duty to any such established Settlements is not founded in an implicit Faith whose proper Objects are things not seen
name they might give it to put a better gloss upon the thing they were no Parliament till King Charles made them so for he their lawful King by an Act in Legal Parliament might stamp on them that Character and give them that Authority and Force which they had not before and thus several of their Acts might become Laws by virtue of that after Ratification not by any force of their own But as for calling back the King that was not making any new Law but enforcing the old and was not so much an Act of Authority as Obedience and Duty And if you could find out the same way you would be the best Friends to your Country and your selves T. B's 2d Lett. p. 17 18. Eucher To answer according to the way and order you lead me as I have before told you we are now under no obligation to call in King James so being under another settlement things are not out of Order and Unsettled as they were upon the convening of that Free Parliament and as there is no occasion so there is no opportunity to attempt it But whereas you charge the Subjects in general with Rebellion and Expulsion of their King 't is a broad slander and falshood for beside the far greater numbers of the people that never moved it seems that very few that actually went over to the Prince ever designed the expulsion of King James but only the secure reduction of him and his exorbitant claims of omnipotent Prerogative to the just limits of Law and Reason by Parliamentary ways of Composure Which tho' they could not procure yet did they not expel him but he went off himself either for fear of Life or obstinacy against a Parliamentary Discussion or because of the fatigues of an unsuitable Government But as to the Convention it self it rebelled not against him for had he continued his Presence they would have desired to meet by his Call and then I believe not an Hair of his Head had fallen to the Ground whatsoever his too conscious fears and apprehensions were since the only Argument for the Vacancy of the Throne was founded in his Abdication and that in his Departure from us and leaving us in a state of Anarchy upon which it was not possible that they could rebel against him without his Presence As for your innate Authority to wish and vote for Right I allow your meaning tho' not the impropriety of your words for an inward Right of wishing well is no proper Authority which imports a Superiority over Inferiors nor are private wishes formal votes in Civil Matters in which an Authority to vote is not a natural Right of every man but a positive Power of constituting Orders And in Civil Negotiations all private wishes must concede to publick Suffrages and Determinations And the Land sent up that Free Parliament not on their Natural Rights but Civil Capacities of voting and doing the best Right they could And tho' they did well in bringing back the King de jure having no other King de facto established nor any impediment to the Reduction of the Heir Lineal yet if there had appeared to them any such obstacle as would have rendred his Reduction destructive to the Nation and its Fundamental Liberties and Constitutions according to the Aspects of our Case they would have made some other provision for the time being with which the Nation would then and ought to have acquiesced and so would a good Prince too but there being no difficulty in that Juncture they did their Duty in restoring the King And as for the Name and Character of Parliament whensoever de jure enstamped on them it matters not for they were in that Juncture and those Circumstances a Legal and Authentick Council of the Land tho' extraordinary and whatsoever Settlement they had made for the time being had been valid from their Authority as well as what they did had also authority both from their Duty and the Kings consequent Ratifications for single Acts may have sometimes plural Authorities and Confirmations But to convince you that Conventions of Estates in such Junctures and Confusions are by themselves authoritative to resettle I will discuss it with you and I pray answer me fairly Dyscher Pray try your skill Eucher First then in such a State of Confusion as that in which King James left us has the Nation any Right or Reason to consult for some security order and settlement Dyscher It seems reasonable that this be allowed Eucher By whom then should a National Consultation be transacted Or who should or can be so regularly and efficaciously entrusted as the old standing Council of the Land Dyscher I must confess I cannot assign any Council so proper as that and none else that can be pretended legal Eucher Must the Determination of this Council be allowed any publick Efficacy or Virtue to oblige Dyscher Yes if it pass according to Right Eucher But if they judge their Determination to be right must their Judgment take place to all Civil Effects against all private and extrajudicial Objections or no Dyscher Yes except the prevarication is notorious Eucher Notorious To whom notorious Dyscher To all men to the whole Nation to their own Consciences as the Exclusion of King James was Eucher Then no Notoriety less than National shall justifie a Recusancy to such publick Decision Dyscher I were as good as allow it for it seems so Eucher But how shall we discern such a general Notoriety Dyscher By the general and unanimous Censure of all Orders of Men that adhere to the ancient Laws of the Government and fundamental Principles of our Constitution Eucher This will become such an intricate and endless debate whose are the Legal Principles that it will create an intestine War in order to a Decision You must therefore admit a notorious generality or majority of the People or all Orders in it comprehensively or else we shall never get out of the brake or be relieved by any National Consultation if such indeterminate Surmises or Pretensions shall interrupt its Obligation Dyscher Be it so what then Eucher Then I think I have fairly gained my Points for these Concessions admit in a State of Anarchy upon an Abdicant Desertion a Convention of Estates to be Lawful and Authoritative without a Kings Commission or Presence Secondly That the Acts of our Covention were and are valid as not being censured for other but admitted as such by the generality or notorious majority of the Nation which is sensibly apparent by comparing the numbers conforming with the Recusant Conformity and Recusancy being the only proper and legal Tests of Mens Senses hereupon Tho' the Authority of our National Council is such as needs no after Ratification from the disfusive Multitude or the original Freeholders or Burgers of the Land because as the Lords are primitively Councellors for themselves so the Trust signed to the Representative House is total and absolute without need of any
to suffer this only till the ordinary Rule can be fairly recovered If this be so why is it not recovered Sure you will not plead that in justification of a People which is notoriously their Fault and such a Fault as is in their Power to mend when they please Let them unanimosly as they ought return to their Duty and Loyalty and the thing will do it self and without any great pains trouble or danger T. B's 2d Lett. p. 19 20. Eucher But I thought I had long before strangled the life and force of this Objection having abundantly proved our Submission to this National Settlement faultless And so a breach of National Contract is no fair way to a recovery for an opportunity only of doing a thing legally can put us into a fair capacity of recovering the ordinary Course which is not as you â—ancy the business of a moment but an expectation of years and proper Conjunctures at the hands of God whose leisure we are to wait for without our own too violent anticipations Thus the Nation behaved it self thro-out all the Reigns of Henry IV V. and VI. whom you would have challenged for Rebels in lingring too long in the restitution of the Right Line But whereas you propose to us an universal unanimity in reversing this Constitution I will dare undertake the Affair for you sub poena Capitis when you can find me out an effectual Expedient of making us all unanimous Otherwise what shall the unanimous do that are the far less numbers unarmed and in no publick Capacity of acting for the Kingdom against those settled and formed Powers that can easily squeeze all our little unanimities to pieces Shall there be no end of strife No yielding to legal forms of Determination And when there is but little hope or â—wisting the Sand-rope can your thing do it self and that with little trouble pains or danger And yet if King James Abdicated by a real Cession as the Nation judged and I have proved your project would violate not only this extraordinary Settlement but your ordinary Rule also by which in the moment of Cession it devolves on the next Heir Lineal and the Course cannot turn retrograde without the Consent of all the Heirs in being or their proper Curators for them Dyscher But I see you relapse again and become a zealous Advocate for your extraordinary Kings in whose behalf you plead Acts of Parliament made by Extra-lineal Kings which were confirmed submitted to you subtily phrase it by the Lineal Heirs and these were approved by Lawyers nor did the Church ever remonstrate against them And what of all this Let the Vsurpations and Confusions be what they will still men will eat and drink buy and sell and such like Acts. Nor do I think such a State doth acquit men from the Obligation to do what in them lies such things as seem absolutely necessary for the preservation of the Society and the real good of Mankind And if any such things as are necessary for the maintenance of human Affairs and which are accompanied with common Justice in themselves should now be done or enacred and hereafter be confirmed by King James I know no reason to remonstrate against this but I think the need of such a confirmation is a demonstration where the Right and Authority lies T. B's 2d Lett. p. 20. Eucher Since I am bound to follow the way you lead me the first thing I am to observe is your mistake or perâ—â—â—â—ion of my words about the submission of Heirs Lineal by which you say I subtilly mean their confirmation of the Statutes of Extra-lineal Kings which is no part or glance of my meaning and no man carefully heeding the Order of my words could think it to be so For I mention their submission to somewhat mentioned before those Statutes And I truly meant the long and frequent submissions of the Heirs Lineal as Subjects â—o Kings Extra-lineal actually Regnant particularly under the Lancastrian Reigns And even your Edward the IVth Father Duke of York swore Allegiance to King Henry the VIth and kept it till new â—â—aâ—ses of Rupture arose between them So that it is a very impertinent importunity to clamâ—â—r aâ—or◠〈◊〉 subsequent confirmations which I â—ever â—â—â—tioned And instead of subtil it had beer too silly in me to have called a Confirmation of an invalid Act a submission to that feeble thing which is thereby enlivened And yet by your leave all After-confirmations do not suppose always an antecedent Nullity in the Act confirmed for they sometimes secure sometimes continue and sometimes double an antecedent validity which all the Statutes under Extralineals had in themselves for the time being before there could be room for those subsequent Ratifications and the perpetuity of their Virtue stands not in those Ratifications but in the Non-repeal of them And yet however had it been otherwise by parity of Reason all our Acts obliged the Subject now during this present Reign and we are thereby acquitted in our present submission whatsoever nullities it may fall under in your next Revolution But there is a Famous Act viz. the 11th of Henry the VIIth Chap. 1. made in an Extra-lineal Reign that declares it for Law and Equity that Subjects pay their Allegiance to the King for the time being and indemnifies them herein against after punishments This Law was never since confirmed censured or repealed by any succeeding Prince or Parliament and yet stands firm in the Body of our Statutes to all Civil Effects and Judgments which pass ever since according to the importance and tenour thereof And you your self grant me enough for the time being that the Estates may sit in Parliament under Extra-lineal Kings to do and enact things necessary for the preservation of the Society and the real good of Mankind and are not acquitted from an obligation to do so thro' the disorder in the Succession and such Acts in this Reign when hereafter confirmed by King James you will not condemn Sir your humble Servant But can you tell how such Acts could or can pass in such Parliaments without an Oath of Allegiance taken to such Extra-lineal Kings by all the Members I doubt this will put you out of your good humour again and that is a great pity because you are so seldom in it But however these honest Acts must be valid for the time being upon us till King James returns or else the Obligation of the present State to preserve the Society or promote the real Good of Mankind by them will be but of little Virtue or Use Dyscher But pray Sir upon such extraordinary interruptions did all men ever think themselves bound to approve them Did not they still as opportunity served assist Right Did not such proceedings cost a world of Blood and Treasure to none or very ill purpose while no Peace or Ease could be had till things were brought to rights again When matters are in trouble or confusion wise and good Men
it into the body of the Oath and besides they knew it would have made many Persons abhor it but it is plain this they designed and tricked upon you Hence you may perceive that your slippery Remark will not deliver you from the Intention of the Imposer T. B. Sec. Lett. pag. 27. Eucher This Discourse is so involved and you talk of an Imposer so like an Imposer that it is somewhat difficult to trace out your Sense Yet this I will endeavour and if I can be lucky I will give you my Sense of it Here then we are to consider the Intentions first of the Constituting Parliament or Convention secondly of the Recognizing Parliament and thirdly of their Majesties in the Imposition of the Oath First then * Sol. Ab. pag. 9. I acknowledged that the Constituting as well as ensuing Parliament did judge it in their Lawful Right rebus sic stantibus to admit King William and Queen Mary And so they always judge that they for their part act Lawfully and of Right when they admit only a King de facto either when unlawfully forced or otherwise necessitated thereunto by insuperable Exigencies And so Men may Honestly for their part contract faithful Obedience to their Piratick Masters to preserve themselves tho' unlawfully brought into that Necessity This being done by the first Parliament and that in their Judgment on their part lawfully and justly they consider for an Oath of Allegiance always usual upon such new Constitutions And hereupon a Motion was made for an Assertion of Right to be inserted into the Oath but it was rejected This must therefore in legal construction evince that their intention in the Enacted Oath did not imply an Assertion of Right For tho' you can according to the Temper you are of opprobriously tax the Wisdom and Gravity of that Great Assembly yet we are obliged only to an open and sincere Intention not a tricked one especially that which you would trick upon them and us too that you might blacken and reproach our Innocency tho' yet how we could be tricked out of our Senses if Allegiance manifestly includes Right as you say I cannot divine However herein are two points of Right observable one in their Majesties taking the Crown and another in the Convention in the admission of them thereto And in both these they obliged us to Swear no Assertion but only as * Sol. Ab. pag. 9. I told you to promise that Allegiance due by our Laws to Kings thus actually admitted without any other charge upon us to Swear the Justice and Rectitude of their Proceedings of which there is no competent or superiour Judge or Witness but God Secondly After the Constituting comes the Recognizing Parliament who added a Declaration of their Majesties Right in taking and possessing the Crown as well as of the Rectitude of our Admission for this makes up the Title de Jure in their Majesties This might be the mental intention of the first Parliament but it was not by them promulgate or recognized which omission was therefore supplied by the second Parliament But notwithstanding this Recognition of Right they neither added nor altered any thing as to the Oath but that still stood and yet stands in its first Intention which it received wholly and solely from the first Parliament So that the first Parliament discharging us from an Assertion of Right in their and their Majesties Proceedings and Settlement in that Oath and the second Parliament doing nothing to the Oath it does not by its Recognition charge us to Swear more or otherwise than the first had done So that all the Right that can fairly be supposed owned and imported in taking and imposing that Oath is that private Subjects have a Right to Swear and pay that Allegiance which the Estates have thus fixed And here also we must distinguish between the Intentions of Judgments and Acts of Parliaments in all those Parts Points and Articles which the Subject Swears nothing to and those particular words or points which are directly set in the Oath and so proposed to common Observation For the former only oblige the Conscience of the Subject to exteriour and civil Duties without involving any interiour Censure or Sense upon the Moral Integrity and Conscience of our Masters But an Oath asserting the Moral Justice of Humane Intentions or Procedures is a dangerous snare in all Cases above a Man's understanding liable to debate doubt or question as all publick Politicks generally are especially with the Vulgar And if a Man may be allowed with Modesty to guess at the Piety of his Superiours it seems it is such a snare as the Parliament never intended to lay for themselves and therefore not for us for whom they must have began the Example For 't is rational to believe that most of the Members that really were of and for the Opinion de Jure as well on their Majesties Measures as their own in this Settlement would not willingly have Sworn that Right absolutely tho' they would have Sworn their belief of it For Matters of Fact of which alone we can be certainly conscious either by our outer or inner Senses are the only proper Matter of Assertions and especially legal Depositions But Points of Law and Right concerning Matters of Fact are more remote from that evidence and clearness of Sense and Perception than to be given upon Oath and are delivered by Courts as Judicial Opinions only that pass into a Civil Effect tho' the Judges if put to it would not always not any time willingly Swear the Infallibility of such Judgments especially the doubtful or dissenting Judges against their own private and personal apprehensions Thus then in Parliament the Matters of Fact appeared evident enough to the Houses but the Points of Law arising upon the Facts underwent much and long discussion upon which at last the Judgment for Abdication and an actual vacancy passed so that in their Opinion they for their part might in that State of Affairs proceed to this Settlement and upon these Opinions they acted as taking them for True Legal and Right Yet considering that most of both Houses were not Lawyers it is not imaginable that they could willingly have Sworn the certain and absolute Rectitude of these Opinions especially they who were of contrary Sentiments but over-ruled by the majority And hence the Assertion of Right was rejected from the Oath And I wish all Projectors of Oaths in points of Law Title and matters without our reach or power would follow and reverence the Exemplary Wisdom and Tenderness of our Parliaments herein that no tricks nor traps may be laid for Consciences in a State and Age in which we have given them so profuse a liberty But to return from this Progression the alteration from the old or last Form made in this Oath by the designed omission of asserted Right argues an intentional discharge of that difficulty or doubt in this present Oath which has nothing in
to O. C. by our old Laws which was the first thing in question But then I proceeded further and shewed * Sol. Ab. pag. 12 13. that he had no legal Form of Settlement in the Sovereignty by any other Laws to which I refer your Memory and Consideration For the improvement of which I will further demonstrate that he was no King either in Name or Thing For first he was Created even by his own Faction not Sovereign but Protector only of the People And that Office was not Royal as appears by the third and fourth Articles of the Instrument of his Government instituted by his Officers first and after again pretendedly confirmed by his pretended House of Commons which he had first purged of all suspected Persons and this after he had refused the Style of King which he saw would not pass Muster in his Army Tho' therefore he Ruled by the force of his Confederacy yet not as legal Sovereign nor according to any Law or lawful â—orm of Constitution even in that false Authority But if you will allow meer Force to be sufficient to a Settlement and Constitution then all the little Elves and Goblins of Power that after him pretended to sit at Helm in the whole course of those Changes till the Return of the Royal Family were all worshipful Mushroom Sovereigns forsooth And what I have heard a Person of great Parts Honour and Authority sometimes say that tho he is no very Old Man yet he hath seen five and twenty Governments in England was perhaps as severely true as it seemed pleasantly spoken Have you any more Straws to pick in this Matter or will you dismiss me in peace Dyscher No no Friend you must not think to slip your Collar so You say that O. C. did not and could not pretend a National Contract as having no House of Lords nor free House of Commons Whatever he might do I am sure that he did pretend that he was advanced to the Government by the Consent and even Grant of the People of England What was it else he did pretend M. S. Reflex Eucher Tho' I mentioned his Non-pretension as well as incapacity to pretend a National Contract to argue thence that really he had none yet the intended force of my Reasoning lies in his real want of such Contract of which his Non-pretension in his Case and care for Pretensions is a Moral Argument For had he really had it the Civil effect had been the same without a Pretension which alone can have no Civil Efficacie or Obligation But however that I may not seem to neglect your Pretences let us examine his I allow therefore that he made some Pretence but none to the Lord's House which he utterly cashier'd which yet however had been and still is necessary to a National Contract I allow you also that he pretended his Advancement by the People as the word restrainedly signifies the Commons of England and he had a small Colour for this in the acknowledgment of the Usurping Pack that pretended to sit for the Common People of England against all the Laws and Rights of the People And yet had these been a free fair and full Representative they could not have given O. C. a Legal Dominion over the superior Estate of Peers because the Commons never had it themselves But as the word People properly comprehends all subject Orders Estates or Persons of the Realm so neither did nor could he pretend an Advancement by the People But the main point we are concerned in and which you can say nothing for pertinent to our Debate is to what State Stile or Character he was advanced or pretended to be advanced by them whom he called the People Was it to a real Royal Soveraignty No no his Mouth Watered his Bowels hanker'd at it but he was however forc'd to sit down and pretend only to a Protectory Trust for the Commons of England Dyscher This I confess reduces me to some difficulty and unexpected Surprize Yet will I repeat to you the remainder of what my reflecting Friend remarked that in the next place for the justice of his pretence that he had no House of Lords I suppose he made that no pretence against himself as you would have me believe MS. Reflex Eucher Truly I never perswaded or tempted you to believe that O. C. made any pretence against himself I only told you that he neither did nor could pretend the Contract of the Lords House and can you prove the contrary Dyscher But he did not think a Lords House necessary to make a National Representation It could not be so originally And therefore they as Lords are no Parties in the Original Contract We know an * This is false for there were near 200 excluded Members that could not sit to make it an entire House House of Commons hath Voted them useless And at this Day the Lords do not pretend to the Right of granting away the Money of the People And I suppose it is upon this Account that they do not look upon themselves as the Representatives of the People MS. Reflex Eucher Here I think my self obliged to do your Party right that these are not their common Sentiments This was a singular Nostrum of your assuming Emperick to heal a diseased Cause But by the good leave of the Lords and Commons whom I have no mind to set at variance we will sift these odd Politicks Is it then first of all likely that O. C. did not think a Lords House necessary to a National Contract If he did it 's no matter if he did not think them National Representatives The Language of Men herein is various many Men commonly assert the whole Parliament to represent the Nation since what is Enacted by them and the King altogether is taken for the Act of the Nation But strictly speaking the Lords are no formal Representatives nor did I ever say they were tho' you would trump the term of Representation upon me to ensnare me to a concession that the Lords represent But I am not so to be tricked I know the Lords to be an Estate Originally Principal acting Personally for themselves in their own Right and Name not in the Name or on the Mission of others and under the King they are the upper part of the Parliament and People in the most comprehensive Sense of this word But the lower House only are the Representatives of their Respective Counties Cities and Burroughs in whose Name and Right they Act for all the Commons of England But if O. C. knew the Lords House necessary to the King himself to Enact the Bills even of the Commons into Laws could he think them needless to the legitimating his Order or his Acts Surely he could not except upon this one only supposition that he thought nothing could legitimate it which is indeed not improbable but then that exauctorates the Commons also of that Power by which he pretended himself advanced
King had prejudged against all the Argument for Abdication and had been a virtual Sentence that he had not abdicated And they could not well have resumed that debate without rejecting his Letters after reading and censuring their own admission of them which would more justly have exposed their Wisdom and offended you than the measures which they observed But after judgment past for the Abdication they could not admit his Letters under the Royal Style because they had judged that he was not our then King and so the Admission of his Letters as their Kings had been a virtual Reverse of that their Judgment in the same Session and Breath by which they had rendred themselves if not altogether incompetent yet very injudicious Judges And if after Judgment against his then Sovereignty they had sent to him under the style and salutation of late King and have made him King a-new had it not been a wise Transaction much to their Credit Thanks and the Nations Interest So much then for the Conspiracy Next for the Authority which you say was none since no National Subjects of a Sovereign Monarch can be his Judges And by Mr. Johnson's leave I will say so too and did say so * Sol. Ab. p. 4. most expresly tho' you in great sincerity take no notice of it because it it seems it was not considerable enough But is it not a very considerable Assertion That when a King is fled from his Throne into foreign Dominions and doth not exert any Royal Power or presence to his People the Estates of this Land are the Supreme Domestick Judges upon the Tenure of the Sovereignty which is not to make them Judges of the Kings Person but in the want of his Person of the State of the Kingdom and the Rights of the Nation in Order to Settlement And can you either disprove this saying or charge it or me with Regicide Principles Clamat Melicerta periisse frontem de rebus may well deserve your remembrance here especially since I told you * Ibid. p. 9. that King James was never in Law subject to them or under their Power But as to the Authority of the Estates to convene when there is no King actually regnant you may learn if you please that tho' the Estates were created by Kings yet their Rights and Charters are perpetual and constituted for a fundamental Council to the Land under the King while we have one governing but when we have none authoritative of themselves to resettle the Nation the best manner they in their judgment may or can And this right they have in common with all the like Orders of Estates in all other Kingdoms otherwise the Nation would not have been so earnest for a Free Parliament when that liberty was opened to them by General Monks Conduct Dyscher I shall talk with you about that Parliament by and by And when I have told you That your second Parliament hath no more Authority than your Hocus Pocus transubstantiating Convention that riotous Assembly all whose Acts were contrary to Law and censurable by Law and so cannot confirm them I will examin your grave Position That when a King is fled from his Throne into foreign Dominions or doth not exert any Royal Power or Presence to his People the Estates of this Land are the Supream Domestick Judges upon the Tenure of the Sovereignty But am I bound to follow their Judgment against manifest Right and my known Duty T. B's 2d Lett. Eucher No no by no means but in such a Crisis you have no other known Duty toward any Settlement but to abide by that which they establish in the Land for the time being for that all Rights and Duties then debatable are in such junctures determinable by them to all Civil Effects and Obligations and therefore their Judgments ought not to be opposed by any slanders or factions whatsoever even tho' King James from abroad condemns them Por a Foreign Censure is no Civil Judgement and by consequence of no legal validity or virtue Kings sometimes suffer wrong but whensoever by these sufferings they are removed from their People the Estates must provide for the Nation as they can and as they do we must be content nor has the suffering King any Right to engage us from abroad to the contrary And this Authority even without a King is so full in it self that it needs no Ratification on the post-fact to make its Acts obliging or effectual tho' such a declarative sort of Ratification as our second Parliament made be of use to satisfie unsetled minds and second a former Obligation which was what I had respect to when I said We are the more to submit to the proceedings of the Convention and first Parliament since the Kingdom hath ratified their proceedings in a second viz. by a Declarative Recognition and reinforcement of their legality and virtue Dyscher After all your considerable Assertions are but a malicious insinuation against your suffering King as if he ran away thro' wantonness and would have nothing to do with us T. B's 2d Lett. p. 17. And herein Mr. Johnson seems more sincere in his wickedness than your Dawbers For he tells your Parliament that there was no Desertion * Pres to the Commons before his Argument p. 16. For King James must needs go and leaves us to understand the rest of the Proverb by an Aposiopesis that he was Devil driven And so far speaks plain as to say That he was as much driven from England as Nebuchadnezzar was driven to Grass and he claimed as he fled by the Rochester Letter And he further shews * Ibid. p. 19. That no advantage could be taken of a Kings withdrawing himself from the Government if it had been voluntary as all the World knows it was not without a Summons sent after him to return again in forty days And therefore he roundly professes that the people abrogated their King after his Expulsion And whence is it then that he exerts not his power You know he exerts all the power he can that he doth not more is not his fault but yours you may have both his Power and Presence among you too if you please But will you contrary to your Duty and Oaths keep him out by force of Arms and then plead your own wickedness in your Defence T. B's 2d Lett. p. 17. Eucher Mr. Johnson falsly owns the fact you charge upon the Nation for the sake of his Principle which his spite to all Kings and Kingly Power has cast him into viz. That the People may Depose their Kings as often as they judge them Peccant which is almost as often as they please But 't is notorious that the Estates judged the Throne made Vacant not by their Act of Abrogation but the Kings own Abdication which if so all the world knows it must be in some degree Voluntary Now here will I challenge Mr. Johnson to say out Does that claim of the then
a perpetual Servitude by Oath or other forms of engagement which they under such Exigences may lawfully yield to And proportionably the Estates of any Nation may be thus pressed by an irresistible Prince and thereupon lawfully submit to that injurious Demand of such Prince Nay if any Prince and the fiduciary Council of any Nation concert to oppress the Subject People by an unjust demand of Submission they being not only in Fact but Legal Constition uncapable to resist may for the same reason contract Submission or Legal Allegiance when their former Lord hath left them without order to shift for themselves and acts not within his Sphere as heretofore For herein you do not injure him but save your self which he has no right in such cases to deny you And this at least is the Case of all those who have taken the Oath of New Allegiance without doing any thing else in the Revolution tho' the Prince and our Convention had really done King James and us wrong For we could neither in Right nor Fact oppose it for our Representatives and the Lords having determined upon the Nation we were inhabil to censure their Judgement and consequently to oppose or subvert what we had no Authority to condemn Dyscher Much such another instance is * Sol. Ab. p. 6 7. your Lord of a Mannor Let him look how he came to be so I may treat with him as Lord of the Mannor whom the Law declares to be so But if the Lords Tenants conspire against their lawful Landlord and dispossess him of his Mannor and invite a Stranger and say and swear he shall be Lord of the Mannor and accordingly pay Homage and Fealty to him Sir you may determine for their swearing and lying too if you please but I shall have nothing the better opinion of your honesty for it T. B's 2d Lett. p. 24. Eucher I observe two grand defects in this Reply One that 't is not supposably legal that all the Tenants in the Mannor can by Legal Forms of Judgment dispossess a Lawful and possess a wrong Person into the Lordship of a Mannor because these Tenants are not Judges in Law And any other violent and illegal Forms of Expulsion and Admission quadrate not with our Case But Secondly 'T is a very silly supposition and never any where exemplified in Fact that all the Tenants under a state of National Government should violently out a true and put in a wrong Landlord vi armis and swear and pay the wrong Possessor all the Duties of the Homage accustomed when the Lord that is in by Law will bring the strength of the Country to reduce them And Thirdly You cannot duly apply this to our present Case of Allegiance For all King James's Subjects did not concur to out him either violently or judicially nor consequently to bring in the Stranger which is the form in which you state the Case of Rebellious Tenants Otherwise however my parallel holds good that if a great many of the Tenants conspire with a Stranger and bribe the Judges to a corrupt Judgment against the old true Landlord who being thereby ejected the Stranger comes in by forms of Law I say still the rest innocent Tenants tho' conscious of the Wrong may swear Homage and Fealty to the New de facto Landlord And so here put the Case as you would have it at the worst that never so great a part of King James's Subjects had with the Prince of Orange actually conspired against him and made him fly and thereupon a National Court assembling to sit upon the Tenure of his Estate had been corrupted to give wrong Judgment against him for the Prince yet the form of Process being legal the innocent Subjects may or must take him for their Royal Landlord that is in by Forms of Law and swear him the customary Homage and Fealty But for the justice of that Judgment I have fully advocated already and so in this place shall have no need to make repetition Dyscher But let the Fifth Commandment look to it self for it was never so hardly beset You say * Sol. Ab. p. 7. That from the Fifth Commandment we cannot charge King William with subjection to King James c. But does a Nephew or a Son in Law owe no Duty if he owe not that which is properly called Subjection Or may a Man because he is not his Subject spoil another of all he has And must all persons applaud and approve the Act and swear he is in the Right T. B's 2d Lett. p. 25. Eucher Since I must bear the penance of answering your loose and impertinent Questions so often inculcated know you then that as to the point of Duty a Nephew owes an Uncle and a Son in Law owes his Father in Law Reverence on the account of those Relations if the Superior Relation loses not his Title to that Reverence by ill usage For if an Uncle shall misuse a Nephew or a Father in Law the Son in Law without Cause and will not fairly adjust or refer their differences upon demand the Nephew and Son in Law owe no respect at all for that such Uncle and Father in Law is worse than a stranger and a most unnatural Enemy And therefore the Nephew and Son in Law having not derived their Being Maintenance nor Education from the Uncle and Father in Law and being under no present dependence on them are free to vindicate their Gauses against such Uncle and Father in Law by those ways of defence that they are legally capable of either by Law Arbitration or War As for injustice you know I am no Advocate for it and therefore your Interrogation hereupon with your Reflection upon his Majesty is as invidious toward me as injurious towards his Majesty as I have before abundantly shewed Dyscher The Case of an own Daughter is still more severe but for that you say * Sol. Ab. p. 7. she is in Duty bound to follow her Husbands Fortune Order and Authority even against the Will of her Father and that with a more plenary consent if she judges her Husbands Cause to be just in it self But Sir I am not satisfied with your bare word that a Woman is thus bound to follow her Husband thro' thick and thin let her have a care how she becomes partner in his sins But doth the Duty of a Wife take away the Relation of a Child They may indeed limit each other so that the Father may not command the Daughter any thing inconsistent with the Duty of a Wife nor the Husband the Wife any thing inconsistent with the Duty of a Child to a Parent But yet the great end of these Relations is to strengthen and support and not to destroy each other Besides your Reason is a mistake in it self as to this Case for could you with all your tricks of Legerdemain remove both King James and the Prince of Wales out of the way then there
Allegiance to the * Lib. 1. Can. 27. King de facto * Ibid. Chap. 28. tho' he come into the full Settlement by wrong and injurious means and requires only a National Submission or a continuance of quiet possession to the form of * Ibid. Chap. 30. a full and thorow Settlement owning the original wickedness of the seizure to be no Legal Bar or impeachment to the Authority of their Government into which they are formally and fully settled And such was the State of the Caesars in the Empire when the two great Apostles required Christian Subjection to them not on the moral justice of their Titles of which they could be no Judges but on their actual settlement in the Concession and Submission of the Senate and other popular Powers And such also was the reason of subjection in those instanced Changes on which that Convocation wisely grounded this their now celebrious Determination But since you have again upbraided me with Mr. Johnson I cannot choose but observe how naturally men that run into contrary extreams do meet in the other side of the Sphere as you and your greatest Adversaries do in this present Controversie And you both therefore fall into the same absurdities Now here Mr. Johnson either understands not the formal Nature of a full Settlement of if he does he is inconsistent with himself For if as I have proved a National Admission constitutes a Settlement how can Mr. Johnson explode Settlement when he places the Right of Kings in the Admission of the People But if he requires any moral justice to make the Act of the People Rightful then if the People fail in that moral Justice how can their Constitution be really Right by which Justice it self is violated And such failure in a People is no impossibility except you will entitle them to an infallible Sanctity in all popular Actions As for example Mr. Johnson produces but one Authority * Arg. 1. p. 50 51. out of Knyghton to prove that Kings acting perversly against the Laws may be deposed and some one of the Royal Race advanced by the Peers and People I will not now strive to weaken the Authority and Credit of the Author herein nor the Truth of that Power which the then Lords and Commons claimed against their King neither will I alledge the many Changes and Statutes since that seem to have abrogated the popular right of Abrogation but suppose that this still is the Right of the Nation against their Kings yet if the People should on false pretences and imputations abrogate their King this Act could not be morally Just and Right tho' it were in form legal and if the Subjects that are innocent are not to admit what is thus externally Legal except it be also altogether Rightful then are they not bound to stand by any Popular Abrogations which they know or judge to be morally faulty and consequently may oppose all new Titles if they are founded in the real Right of such Abrogations And to come close home to the Case if King James were not really guilty of every one of those Enormities to a Title upon which such Statute did legitimate the Abrogation and the Convention had really abrogated their King without accurate conviction of all those guilts recited by that lost or undiscoverable Statute quoted by Knyghton then had their Abrogation been a nullity as not being Rightful But further if men shall object that Knyghtons relation of a Statute not seen by himself but only said to be objected by the Peers and the Commons is not a Record nor a valid Testimony to any Civil Consequences as being not upon Oath liable to Error and uncapable of judicial forms of Discussion besides its singularity where shall we find a bottom to authorize King James's abrogation For 't is not enough to a Judicial Conviction or effect or surmise that Richard destroyed that Statute in the Tower upon such a general crimination that he defaced Statutes of which there is no particular form of Conviction extant no not in Knyghton who yet is the only Traditor of this Transaction but you must bring us legal proof for what must legally concern us And yet nothing else that Mr. Johnson hath cited out of Law Books nor King John's Charter in the Pastoral Letter doth amount to a Popular Right of Abrogation but only to a limited power of resisting Kings on their oppression of the Laws and Constitutions So that whatsoever has in fact been done toward our several Changes must not all be taken or sworn to as Right but the consequent Settlements by National Acts must be taken for formally Legal for the time being and submitted to under that Notion leaving the real Right of the procedures to Gods judgment because there is none other under Heaven to adjust it above the National Sanctions Dyscher I did not interject the mention of Mr. Johnson to justifie all his Principles but only to alledge for our Cause those Right Concessions of our greatest Enemies as more candid and clear from jugling than you even in his greatest bitterness I will now dismiss him and produce you what a Friend of mine impartially reflected on this pretended Authority in the Judicial Opinions of Parliaments viz. that you cannot but know that this Power of Parliaments is absolutely denied by that Party against whom you dispute and we do not think it reasonable to be convinced without proof viz. that what is thus done is agreeable to the Laws of England MS. Reflect Eucher If you are not inwardly convinced of the truth of their Judgment upon their Power and of the lawfulness of their Constitution founded thereupon I cannot help that Neither is the Care of the State so much concerned to enforce such an inward conviction tho' it is to perswade it and to silence Contradictions But as I have often told you Judicial Opinions must overbear all private ones to the contrary as to all Civil Consequences This the peace of mankind the necessity of ending Controversies and the fundamental Reasons of Government do universally require so that you must assign some Superior Court or Judge within the Kingdom to be determined by if you will not stand to their Judgment or expose all to private judgments the first of which is impossible to be sworn and the later impracticable in a Society And to turn the dull point of this Objection on your self the Parliament doth not think it reasonable to be determined by Private Judgments especially those of the professed Enemies of their long-settled and immemorial Authority And what if I oppose the general Trust of the Nation in Civils to the publick Judgment of our Parliaments rather than the contrary Decisions of some private Zealots and Casuists whose Senses are seldom uniform often impracticable and always inauthoritative Will you here set your Private Judgments in battle array against the Authority and Judgment of the whole Nation and the Publick Estates thereof Or whether
is that which you promise me from the Scriptures I pray out with that too that I may either reply to it or send it to the Censure of Gilman's Coffee-House or the Impartial Reflections of a Private Friend Eucher I cannot be sullen to you to whose Felicity and sound Judgment I wish with all my Soul I could contribute And you being men of Religion that can dare to suffer for what you think right and sacred will be like to have greater respect to good and clever Arguments from the Holy Oracles We will therefore consider the several Settlements of the Children of Israel under Civil Forms of Government and try whether their actual plenitude consisted in a National Contract or any other bottom And in order hereunto I shall observe two sorts of Settlements among them one Consequent to an Antecedent Right and Title the other constituent of the Title to and in the Sovereignty And according to this Order I begin with the former First Then God upon a good original and antecedent Title actually settles himself in the political Royalty and Government of that People hence by Divines usually called the Theocracy by that Covenant at Sinai by which he properly and peculiarly became their God and King also and they his peculiar People not only under a Religious and Ecclesiastical but also a Civil Relation Exod. 19. Exod. 24. alib passim When God himself and Samuel the Prophet in God's Name had entitled Saul to the Throne of Israel by a sacred Unction yet was he afterwards actually and fully settled therein by the Popular Engagement of true Allegiance to him and was hence said to be made and chosen King as well by the People as by God and Samuel 1 Sam. chap. 9. Chap. 10. Chap. 11. Chap. 12. Thus tho' David's Title to that Succession was divinely originated in the Unction of Samuel 1 Sam. 16. yet his full and actual Settlement over Judah consisting in his Unction by the People in Hebron 2 Sam. 2. and after the death of Ishbosheth he was thro'ly and actually settled over the other Tribes by their Covenant and Unction transacted by their Elders 2 Sam. 5. And Solomon tho' designed by God and advanced by David and anointed by Zadock into the full Title unto that Sovereignty was yet finally and compleatly settled in that Throne of the Lord by the consequent Acts and Unction of that People as an Induction on an antecedent Presentation and Institution 1 Kings 1. 1 Chron. Chap. 24. Chap. 25. And thus to Rehoboams Paternal Title the People were to add their Actual Consummation of his Settlement in like manner 1 King 11. 2 Chron. 10. And last of all Jehu who by a Prophetick Unction and Gods Designation had a Divine Right and Title to the Sovereignty of the Ten Tribes and began to make way to his Actual Settlement by the slaughter of Joram Ahaziah and Jezabel yet sends to the Council at the Royal City Samaria and bids them settle the best and meetest of their Masters Sons on the Throne of their Father Ahab as knowing that that had been the usual Office of the Senate But they not daring to oppose Jehu tho' perhaps they knew nothing of his Prophetick Unction reply that they would not make any King i. e. any but himself but they contract a total submission to him and sealed that Contract in the Blood of Ahab's Sons and so actually admitted him into the full Settlement and Possession of that Sovereignty 2 Kings Chap. 9. Chap. 10. So that tho' these Titles to the Sovereignty were not founded in the Grant of the People but of God yet the full Settlement of all these New Kings consequent to their Titles did consist in the Publick Contract and Recognition of the People Secondly The Peoples Concurrence was sometimes constituent of a Title meerly human as well as a full and formal Settlement Thus the People would have given Gideon an hereditary Monarchy Judges 8. as the Elders of Gilead made Jephthah their Captain Judges 11. and as the Shechemites did what in them lay entitle Abimelech Judges 9. The Ten Tribes made Jeroboam King which God that had preingaged it by his Prophet ratified by an inhibition against Rehoboams recovery 2 Kings 12. 2 Chron. Chap. 10. Chap. 11. But Zimri who reigned but seven days in Tirzah without the full consent of the whole People wanted a good Title as well as a full Settlement thereupon and so was opposed by the Camp at Gibbethon who set up Omri against him and so he perished in a Fire of his own kindling 1 Kings 16. And this was that perhaps which Jezabel objects to Jehu 2 Kings 9. Had Zimri peace who slew his Master Did the people permit him a full and peaceable Settlement in the Throne who slow his own Sovereign Which Omri however obtained after the extinction of Tibni his Competitor 1 Kings 16.22 23. Thus in the Kingdom of Judah after Josiah's death the People of the Land took Jehoahaz probably the younger Brother to Eliakim and made him King And in that Act of the People the fulness of his Title as well as his Actual Settlement seems to have consisted 2 Kings 23. 2 Chron. 36. So that in short the Regular Constitution of their Native Kings was that subordinately to Gods Election the People should settle each New Line according to the direction of the Law Deut. 17.14 15. When thou shalt say I will set a King over me thou shalt in any wise set him King over thee whom the Lord thy God shall choose c. But in the degeneracy of the Ten Tribes they set up Kings by their own Act alone without waiting or consulting the Will of God as he complains Osee 8.4 They have set up Kings but not by me they have made them Princes but I knew it not Yet God's permission hereof made the usage valid to a Title meerly human tho' done contrary to the Law And therefore to Baasha who came in this way God says 1 Kings 16.2 I have exalted thee out of the Dust and made thee Prince over my People Israel Now these things in fact were done as well in injury to the Heirs-Royal as to God and yet the full and actual Settlement by the People according to their modes gave them a form of human Title which was civily valid tho' not otherwise and especially Sacred And to conclude since it is recorded that God at first granted them Kings at their request after the manner of the Nations 1 Sam. 8. it intimates that this was then the Formal Rule of New Settlements at least among all the bordering Nations However this Office of the People being always the final Act must needs give the last plenitude to the Settlement and God surely in the admission of these Forms must be granted to know and judge them to be full and final whatsoever else was or might be sometimes constituent of an antecedent Title which the Convocation-Book does not make essentially
Right which is a Tender Point to be Sworn to You answer * Sol. Ab. p. 9. that the Oath expresses no form of Affirmation concerning Right But what if it doth not as long as it expresses what manifestly includes Right And this Allegiance directly and manifestly doth For it is the proper duty of a Subject to his Lawful Sovereign and contains an Obligation to the Performance of all those Acts which are required from every Subject as he stands Related to his Rightful Sovereign It is the immediate Result of that Relation So that where you deny your Allegiance due you in consequence deny the Right of the Prince where you Pay your Allegiance it is as owning him to be your Prince And therefore when you swear Allegiance you Tacitly swear a Right For tho' there is a sort of Obedience or Observances which may be paid to Vsurpers Robbers and Pirates yet Allegience may not be paid to them as being the Natural duty of the Subject which The Laws and Constitutions have Appropriated to their Legal Prince and made Inseparable from him And now I hope you will not tell us that the Oath doth not express Allegiance T. B's 2d Let. p. 26. Eucher The giddy ramblings in your forms of expression Create in me a just suspition of either your Ignorance or Insincerity or both For First you Confound the Terms Lawful and Rightful as Synonymous even thereby to equivocate Secondly You say that Allegiance manifestly Includes Right and yet that he that swears Allegiance doth but Tacitly swear that Right that is manifestly Included in Allegiance But if we manifestly swear a manifest Allegiance it is manifest that we manifestly not Tacitly swear all that is manifestly Included in it But if we do Tacitly swear the Right then is that Right but Tacitly Included and prehaps so Tacitly that the Swearers themselves do not perceive it But as to the distinction between Lawful and Rightful I have but just now explained it at Large and * Sol Ab. p. 7. The Actual Landlord who is visibly Legal tho' not Honestly Rightful offered it to you in our first Conference which makes your Neglect of its Observation so much the more Disingenuous and Culpable as proceeding from a design to Ensnare So again you Prevaricate when You say Where I deny Allegiance due I in consequence deny the Right of the Prince For there may be two sorts of Right immediate and mediate the former without the latter upon an intermediate and qualifying Condition Again an immediate Right to a Crown to be enjoyed must be distinguished from an immediate Right to Allegiance founded in the actual possession of the Crown Now he that hath a just immediate Right to a Crown not possessed hath no immediate Right to my Allegiance and no more at the most can be assigned him than this that he having a real Right to the unenjoyed Crown hath a real but mediate Right to the Allegiance on the condition of Possession for want of which he cannot as yet claim the Allegiance of the Subject for whatsoever materials Right he has the legal Title to Allegiance consists immediately in the legal State and Forms of Possession Wherefore I do not deny alwaies a real Right to a Crown where I deny may Allegiance legally and immediately due for this denial of Allegiance so due denies only a formal Title thereto consisting in a legal actual Settlement in the Sovereignty except I declare that the Reason why I deny a Prince Allegiance due is because he in my Judgment has no just and real Right to the Crown he has but then that Reason is my own private not the publick Reason of the Law or of legal denial of Allegiance due which is the want of legal Settlement So when you go on and say where you pay your Allegiance it is owning him to be your Prince 'T is true indeed it is always owning him to be my Prince formally Legal but not alwaies Morally and Honestly Rightful So that it is not in your Sense alwaies true that when we Swear Allegiance we tacitly Swear a Right But I doubt here you forgot the dubitable Case of the Lancastrian Reigns to which the Nation oft and long Swore Allegiance and to which you have given great allowances But did they all Swear the Lineal Right of that House to that Crown which it enjoyed Or was not such a Sense of the Oath perjurious And if it be so will you vouchsafe it your great and gracious allowances and dispensations You have need here of a new Rubbing-brush to cleanse your Senses and clear up your Memory Dyscher But for all this you are certain no such thing as Right was intended in the Oath For say you * Sol Ab. pag. 9. your Estates in Parliament rejected the Motions made for an Assertion of Right And yet you immediately add that they and the ensuing Parliament judged their admission of King William and Queen Mary rebus sic stantibus to be in their Lawful Right yet they bound not us to Swear so T. B Sect. Lett. Pag. 26. What! if we are bound to Swear according to their Intention and they as appears by the Act of Recognition intend and declare them to be de Jure and so have put the distinction of de facto and de Jure out of doors Which if it be so hard for you to apprehend I will put it into this fair Syllogism The Sense of the King and Parliament the Imposers of the Oath is that King William is King de Jure But we must take the Oath in the Sense of the Imposers Ergo we must take the Oath in this Sense that King William is King de Jure Do you think that King William and Queen Mary did intend that you should esteem them as a King and Queen that had no Right If not then all are perjur'd who Swear to them only as King and Queen de facto i.e. all that acknowledge that Rule of Swearing according to the Intention of the Imposers For the Oath was chiefly made for the satisfaction of King William and Queen Mary and they were the Supream at least the chief part of the Imposers but if they were only a part as none deny them to be in an Act of Parliament then their Sense is included in the Sense of the Imposers and consequently we must take the Oath in their Sense or not take it according to the Sense of the Imposers M. S. Reflex Or did your Conventioners or those that followed them intend to bind you to any thing If they intended to bind you to nothing they laid their wise Heads together to such a purpose as never yet any Men did But if they did intend to bind you to your New Governours in any thing what can that reasonably be supposed to be other than what they admitted them in And that you say was in their Lawful Right They were indeed ashamed at that time to put
interrupt you did you not deny * Sol. Ab. pag. 23. Zadok's Title to be derived from the Kings donation tho' the Scripture expressly affirms that K. Solomon did put Zadok the Priest in the room of Abiathar I Kings 2.35 And do you now on a sudden put all the power of disposing that Priesthood in the arbitrary will of their Sovereigns that so you may oppose the Drs. Principles Dyscher What I delivered then can well consist with my present Sentiments which I offer not in an itch of contradicting the Doctor but upon the reasonableness of the thing it self For in Solomon's time the Genealogies were extant and the due course of Succession obvious on which account I take it Zadok had before in David's time been admitted under Abiathar into the communicable Offices of the Pontificate in order perhaps to the next plenary Succession after the death of Abiathar which Succession now commenced on Abiathar's remove before the time preintended by the actual introduction of him by King Solomon into the possession of what he had an antecedent Title to upon the next vacancy either by the right of Primogeniture which the antient Jews have owned from the first Patriarchs and the Law Lev. 16.32 or upon an ordination by the Ecclesiastic Powers of the Sanhedrin as men of Talmudic learning have conjectured Now it is certain that their native Kings of God's own appointment were obliged to keep the Law and every man's Rights established by it and the doing otherwise was really sinful and offensive tho' such unjust acts of Kings had among them the effectum juris as appears in the sentence of David between Ziba and Mephibosheth If therefore Solomon had rejected Zadok as well as Abiathar such causeless procedure in my opinion had been unjust but yet valid as being not subject to any Tribunal and presumable for just and done upon reasonable although secret Causes But when the Sovereignty fell into the hands of gentile Princes not tyed to the Mosaic Constitutions as their native Kings were and the Genealogies were lost and the Legal Successors unknown or absent the necessity of some high-Priest made the person upon each such vacancy Elective by the Supreme power or with the permission thereof by the priests and people as appears in the Maccabâ—ic History and Josephus Amongst which instances there is one above all most considerable viz. that of Simon who was made high-Priest by the Jews and Priest for ever until there should arise a faithful Prophet 1 Maccab. 14.41 to discover the lineal Successor as also to shew them what to do 〈◊〉 the defiled Stones of the Sanctuary 1 Maccab. 4.46 Whence it appears the sense of that people from the constitution of that Priesthood in Simon and his heirs for want of the true Proprietary Family First that there was an absolute necesity of the high-priesthood Secondly that it legally belonged to Aarons lineal heirs Thirdly that in want of them they if they had freedom were to elect another Family for that Succession All which set together discovers Zadok to be the next regular Successor to Abiathar since the Scriptures impeach not the King of any irregular and despotic injuries against the Laws of the high Priesthood Eucher But what say you to that note of the Dr that it was of the greatest consequence to the Jews to have the annual Expiation performed by one apointed to it by God Does not this argue the Deposition of such a one null and yet upon necessity God permitted the Jews to own the Successor coming in by mere intrusion Dyscher To this I answer that if God himself allowed the Jews to admit such intruders then it appears that it was not of the greatest consequence to the Jews to have the Expiation performed by one to whom it belonged by the constitution of the Law For if the Intruders Expiations were effectually acceptable they did the business as well as the Liturgy of the legal Proprietor But further Gods admission of the Intruder after Intrusion takes off his irregularity ratifies his Title and vacates that of the ejected and so is of Gods particular occasional appointment for the time being tho' not by the original designation of the Law and so this is nothing to the Drs. Hypothesis or Cause And this is in fact the real state of that Case in such Changes The State Civil first intruded Successors into the room of the expelled but this not creating any Plenitude or Sanctity of Title God made up this defect by giving the Intruders the Spirit of Prophecy which supervening made them also Gods high-priests to all Sacred as well as Civil purposes Which act of Gods was not a mere acknowledgment of their antecedent Authority but an efficient thereof to all the intents of the Levitic Law tho' the Dr. would fain perswade us to a contrary notion herein Yet had it been a mere consequent acknowledgment of their Priest hood held only by Intrusion as * Case of Sees c. Ch. 3. § 3. the Dr. intimates it had been nothing to his purpose because upon the Extinction of the Genealogies and Ignorance of the lineal Heirs and the more plenary Subjection therefore of that pontificate to the Gentile Sovereigns who were despotic and free from all the ordinary Rules that obliged their native Kings this had made these Changes of High-Priests in the potificate being an office carnal and temporal even in its Religious acts formally valid and authoritative for that these Gentile powers came into the Sovereignty of their native Kings or perhaps a greater to whom God at their request had subjected the Hierarchy after the manner of the Nations And a great deal of this I told you * Sol. Ab. pag. 24. in our last Conference which no doubt you consulted your Dr. upon tho' he takes no notice of it And I then drop'd another note perhaps worth a second Rumen with you that those Intrusions tho' thus admitted by God were signs of a broken Church and State hastening to its last Dissolution and so no just Precedent for the Christian Church to follow which is to continue to the End of all things except we must yield to methods of Violation that lead to our Extinction And I leave it to the pious consideration of every Religious Conscience to judge whether those servile Submissions to Imperial violences in the instances of the Baroccian Treatise and the others produced by the Learned Dr. against his Opponents did not properly lead to the ruin of the Church into which the Greeks from these precedents are fallen under Mahometan powers all which had been effectually obviated had the Church stuck to the Laws and Canons of the Christian Hierarchy and Communion against the encroachments of wicked Emperors against which it is the Duty of all Churches obstare principiis in contempt of persecutions Hereby and hereby alone shall we be able to stifle all Erastian and Antichristian Arts with which their concomitant persecutions
inviolate against all routs and tyrannical confusions Will not they think a temporal distress incurred for adherence to the fundamental Laws of Catholic Communion less hurtful than a general and causeless deturbation of the pious and regular Priests of God Almighty Can they think it sinless to permit an arbitrary divorce of themselves from their relation to God and the Souls of their People and to let in greedy wolves who covet nothing but the promotions of the Church and for that Cause will pretend an outside Orthodoxy in all other points For put the Case in Fact that once again an O. C. should oppress all by the Sword and turn out at once all the Bishops and Clergy of this Realm and bring in another Set into their Places must the Christian Laity renounce their Canonical relation to the former and embrace that of the imposed and irregular Ministers Or let us look up unto God and enquire within our selves whether of these will God accept for his Servants Must God submit to an irresistible Mob or Hector too Or must we admit those for Gods Messengers whom God never sent and will never own And must this be yielded by us toties quoties whensoever our too mighty Enemies will sport themselves upon us with such a form of persecution I am afraid if this mysterious Secret had been known in the three first Centuries the Heathen Powers when baffled in their other methods of hostility against the Church would have took up this as the most successful because most Orthodox and Christian way of persecution Now suppose such a design had been projected against the Apostles to deprive them of the places and exercise of their Apostleship and to fill their Room with other Orthodox pretenders would the Apostles in Council have allowed people to reject them and receive the intruding Apostles Or could any intrude by the help of the Secular Powers without Sin and Schism and Sacriledge Or would the Apostles have censured these Invaders and have still maintained their own Functions Eucher As to the Office which was peculiar Apostolic necessity was laid upon them and wo had been unto them had they not preached the Gospel in obedience to God rather than man But in that Office as such there could be no successor and so they were to be continued as foundation stones whereas the Episcopal Office is not peculiarly personal but successive Dyscher I will not here except against the validity of this Distinction in these Offices but will put the Case as you set it Suppose the Heathen Powers had passed Seâ—â—ence on the Apostles that being permitted the functions distinctly Apostolical they should not execute their Episcopal Authorities any where nor be received by the Churches as their Bishops but that others provided by the Heathen Enemies should be vested in their Episcopacy would the Apostles have quitted their Episcopacy to which Christ gave them Commission When St. Paul bids the Elders of the Asian Church to take heed to the Flock of which the Holy Ghost had made them Bishops Act 20.28 must that Authority received from the Holy Spirit have conceded to an enstallment of Nero or Domitian Or would the Holy Ghost have truckled under the persecuting Powers and have hallowed the Intruders and deserted those of his former constitution by Apostolic designation And would the Apostles and their first successors with their flocks have judged persecution of their bodies greater than this of their Spirituals that so they should concur in this to avoid the other and be content to submit to the Conduct and Communion of Neronian Bishops that had dethroned the Apostles of our Blessed Saviour and by the heathen sword assumed a Spiritual Jurisdiction over them When Ignatius says that the Bishop and his Presbytery are to be received as Christ and his Apostles with several other earnest and Seraphic Elogies would he have allowed them to be forsaken at the pleasure of an Heathen Mob or Tyrant in exchange for others set up by Idolatrous craft and force Clemens Romanus would not allow this in a domestic Mob in the Church of Corinth and would he concede it to a Mob of aliens and Pagans Eucher I cannot tell how to answer this but perhaps the Dr. may when it shall be offered him Dyscher In the mean time then I take the Bishops to be the Supreme Ecclesiastic Judges as well in the dispensation with as the execution of all secondary Canons whensoever exigences unforeseen or more important than those Canons require their present Relaxation But such dispensing Power lies not upon the fundamental Rules of their Order and Union to dissolve their own being and Authority at the pleasure of the Churches Enemies for no other motives but those of secular terrour for mere fear whereof no Bishop can dispense with his union towards his Colleagues nor Clergy or People be dispensed with as to the Laws of their subordination in the Ecclesiastic unity Eucher Why then you must bring this admission of new Bishops c. violently obtruded upon the violent expulsion of the former into the Catalogue of Sins which the Dr. excepts out of his Principle But he withal denies such admission to be sinful because they are not against the Law of God nor do they make us accomplices to the injustice nor violate the Obligations to our Canonical Obedience nor is the Ordination of the obtruded a mere nullity Dyscher As to the two last Suggestions I shall say nothing to them if the two former are not provable against the Doctor For my Canonical Obedience belongs to my proper Bishop whoever he be and the Ordination of Anti-Bishops is †Treat of Ch. Com. Part. 3. Ch. 6. not censured for a mere Nullity by all our Worthies tho' it is by our Vindicator Let us then begin with the first Consideration whether it be not a Sin by the Law of God I pray how does the Doctor make out the Negative Eucher He says That the Scripture in our Case is altogether silent 'T is true it bids us be obedient to our Governours and that Command reaches as well to the Spiritual as to the Temporal But when there are two that stand Competitors and both claim our Obedience to which of these two our Obedience ought to be paid it leaves to our Wisdom to determine Dyscher You ought here to observe that our Question runs about the Duty or Lawfulness of admitting Intruders upon an open and contested Expulsion of Right not where the Title or Right is dubitable Now when an Intruder contests for the holding an Ecclesiastical Function against the Rightful Proprietor that is invalidly and uncanonically thrust out doth the Law of God leave it to our Wisdom and not to our Justice to determine or does it leave it to our Wisdom to determine according to regular and confessed Justice or according to irregular and confessed Wrong For the Law of God requires us to render suum cuique every Man his due
uncertain Rochester Letter make the Abdication manifestly false since he says it makes the Disertion so Here I doubt his Courage will fail him lest his Argument and his Dedication follow the fate of the Pastoral Letter And yet it is manifest that though K. James made many large and previous steps to the Subverting our Constitution yet the Final Abdication of the whole Government consisted in his Desertion from whence the Vacancy Commenced and if this were no otherwise manifest we have Mr. Johnson's own Averment who tells us * ibid page 29. That we have an Act of Parliament which declares the Realm of England to have been Sovereign during that time of Vacancy between K. James's second flight and K. William's Admission by ordering all Indictments from the time of K. James ' s withdrawing till the 13th of February to run in their Name 'T is true indeed that meer Local Desertion of the Land of which there may be many Causes does not ipso facto extinguish the Sovereignty except it be judicially interpretable to an Abdication from other concurrent Circumstances and Indications on want of which a demand of Return becomes reasonable and the neglect thereof interprets the Recession to an Abdication but when there are evident tokens of yielding up a Government in the form manner causes and circumstances of such Local Desertion then a summons of Return is not necessary in point of Law or National Duty upon the antecedent forms of Virtual Abdication apparent in such Departure If therefore his Act of Disertion in its own form made a Legal and Effectual Abdication his Rochester Letter imports no more than that his words and actions are contradictory in quitting by deed and claiming by word the same Right at the same time Upon this Abdication therefore the Throne becoming actually Vacant was by the Act of the Nation filled up with their Majesties And here upon whatsoever powers K. James endeavours to Exert as they do not reach us nor send out their vertue by legal ways of course so are they too late and out of season not to mention that his late ways of Exertion under French Conduct how honest soever you may call them look not very natural or smiling upon English Men If we sum up the matter he was ruining all the Laws and Liberties with the Religion of the Lands he Ruled and they were just on the Precipice under his Exertions so that the Nation needed and gasped for relief under them Upon this the Prince of Orange having Great Interests and Legal Expectations here comes over with a declared Intention to set all things at Right in such order as the English Parliament should adjust which was a fair and most equal design this then was the time for K. James to have Exerted his Royal Power Justice too in calling a Parliament for such purposes according to the sense of the whole Nation earnestly recommended to him by his Prelates Nobles and Counsellors for a long time by sundry Addresses even to the last and he having sent out some writs thereunto seemed a while enclined but upon Romish Advice recalls that purpose and instead of doing us that Justice was resolved to contest it with the Sword Hereupon his Army which had he called a Parliament to have healed the Nation would have secured him against all Forreign and Domestick Violence sunk their Affections as having no maw to Fight for him against their Native Country Liberties and Religion disperse by degrees and great part go over to that which they knew to be the Juster Cause and he being thus daily weakned retires disbands the rest and even not then calling a Parliament to help himself and us out of the Confusion he flies away to the Grand Enemy and Terrour of this Nation and leaves us to shift for our selves under those Aspects and apprehensions of dangers that lay before us If then he would not exert a Legal Power when he might 't is too late to offer at any Forreign ways of Exertion after a New Settlement or 't is at least unreasonable to demand our Reception of them to the destroying of our Redeemer after a National Allegiance given him for his sake who ever pursued our general Ruine against the Laws his Oath the ties of Natural Affection and the Sighs Groans and Requests of his Loyal People And whereas you say we may have his Power and Presence too if we will as lovely as that may be fancied 't is more than you can warrant For if we were disposed to accept your offers if he should come with a French force are you secured that the French would permit him to be as free and independent a Monarch as before 'T is possible they might erect him for a Vassal titularly Royal till their strength were fixed and then upon demand of Expences or other pretexts pick a quarrel with him to annihilate him for their Masters Glory Or supposing the French King for once a true Friend to King James would not his Forces make King James an Arbitrary Monarch here to exert more than a legal Power over all the Bodies and Souls Estates Coffers and Purses of the Nation If we had had any maw for such Power we might easily have had it while he was here and not have been beholden to the French for the Commodity But if King James should concert privately with us to return without any French measures or services can you assure us to keep this secret from the French King Or if you fail in point of secrecy are you sure he will let King James go or treat with us in neglect of his Interests and Pleasure Or would he not rather Bastile him for Ingratitude and treat him hereupon after his usual methods of humanity Thus pretty are your Projects to expose the Fate and Fortunes of Nations upon and discover such a distemper in the Brain as requires the Law of Bedlam rather than any other consideration Dyscher When we deny the Authority by which your Estates sate you ask us by what Authority was that Free Parliament called or sate that voted in King Charles the Second Sir if you please let another be called and vote in King James the Second When things are out of Order and good men set them to Rights again I do not think any man will oppose it upon the score of some small niceties but when subjects rebel against their Prince and drive him away and make that the ground of their going on and doing farther wickedness I cannot understand the Authority of this There is certainly in every man an innate natural Power and Authority to wish well to and vote for Right By virtue of this when things were in confusion the Subjects of King Charles the Second returning to their Wits and Allegiance send a convenient number to act for the whole who recall their rightful King and if you should do so likewise I should not be very quarrelsom with you But whatever