in a Politick body be the Government Monarchical or Aristocratical c. are but as single men in respect of the Head or Soveraign power for even these in respect of him or them are to be reputed even in their Politick Body but as single or private men so can no more resist the soveraign person or persons than a private man This I believe to be Apostolick doctrine And this the Recognitions made to our own Kings in Acts of Parliament warrant us to say Now a Prince that is thus secured in his Temporals by his own Church or by the Christian faith in relation to this doctrine had need give some very good account of the advantage he makes in his Spirituals by removing from this communion but I am assured his loss is equal in both Government examined by the Law of the Land IF this be the nature of Government in general and of Soveraign Persons What the law of England requires about subjection to whom Government is intrusted let us in the next place examine how the Laws of this our own Nation determine the cases We all know that our Government is a mixt Monarchy and yet by all Foreigners as Bodin Grotius and others is reputed an absolute Monarchy for limitations which transfer not the power unto any other but require only the consent of some other divest it not of the title of Monarchy or of the Kings being an absolute tho' not an arbitrary Monarch as hath been endeavoured to be proved in the foregoing sheets Our Laws say then that Axioms of Law All Persons are under the King and the King under none or omnis sub Rege ipse sub nullo He hath no Peer in his Kingdom nor any Superior but God or Satis ei erit quod Dominum habet ultorem then no Judge over him Allegiance sworn to him not only by single men but by the three Estates Allegiance is to be sworn to him and homage paid not only by every single person through the Kingdom but by every single member of his two Houses of Parliament for not one of them can sit there before he hath taken the oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy and he that reads either of these oaths needs not seek where the Soveraignty is lodged And tho' these oaths were formed principally to disclaim Papal jurisdiction yet that abated they are but the old Legal oath of obedience Nay the three States of Subjects in the Kingdom viz. Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons as a politick body make the same recognition See the recognitions made to the ancient Kings even the Saxons and those to Edward 4. Henry 7. and Henry 8. Q. Elisabeth and especially to King James Great say they to him in an Act of Parliament are our blessings by uniting the two ancient Kingdoms or rather the two Imperial crowns c. and upon the knees of our hearts we agnize our most constant faith obedience and loyalty to your Majesty and your Royal Progeny And in this high Court of Parliament where all the whole body of the Realm and every particular member thereof either in person or by representation upon their own elections are by the laws of this Realm deemed to be personally present Sir Edward Coke observes by the laws of King Alfred as well as by those of the Conqueror the ancient Kings who were Saxons had all the lands of England in demeasnes Inst fol. 58. and the Barons and Lords of Mannors were by the Conqueror enfeoft with all which the King held not but they held it for defence of the Realm under the King and consequently they were to support it in time of danger This evidenced the Conqueror had seized the whole land by way of conquest So as the King was the grand Lord or Lord paramount and the Nobility and Gentry but the mean Lords and all the rest held in vassalage under the King or them Freeholders came in by the Nobilities ill husbandry and by their selling part of their land and enfranchizing of it But still the land was held by some tenure which obliged the Owner Lord or Commoner more or less as in Capite or free Soccage after the conquest for the defence of the land for indeed that is the ground-work of all society For every man is naturally bound with his All to defend the body Politick and the constitution of the Government tho' the quotum and the manner of the raising it had the Subjects consent that it might be the more equally laid and the more cheerfully paid and the more orderly levied and as an evidence the Government was not despotical but the people free and yet thus under subjection The limitations of the Kings prerogative The raising of money or taxes is one of those particulars wherein our Monarch is limited for he cannot raise money upon the Subject but by his Commons and with the consent of the Lords or by concurrence of them both yet the Commons can raise no money but to give unto the King or as the King accepts it for such a use Which is conviction enough that all the taxes of the long Parliament were illegal and their power an usurpation Many other instances there are of the Kings single Supremacy but without mentioning more for all are embowell'd in these few we will conclude with Sir H. Spelmans assertion in his Glossarium Omnis Regni justitia solius Regis est In the next place The Monarchy absolute in Parliament we will consider him in a Parliament and here his prerogative is unlimited or he is in his Zenith or he is entirely Soveraign for here the purse and the sword are joyned together Here or with consent of his Lords and Commons he makes what laws he finds necessary for publick weal which are the two great cases wherein Monarchical prerogative is limited for lives and liberties are secured to Subjects by the Common and Statute Laws of the Realm for we are a free People or we know the Law we walk by And yet in Parliament in matters wherein the publick safety is concerned or the Princes Person a new Law may declare that a treason which before that new law was not so But complication of Acts which were known before and acknowledged of an inferior species to treason before the making such a law cannot be made treason by that law tho' the person for them may suffer as a Traytor The great Act of Treason says nothing should be accounted treason which was not therein particularly named yet all this caution was to exclude inferior Courts from so denominating it but not the King in Parliament Indeed here prerogative is unlimited because here whatever is determined may justly be supposed well weighed and so provided as it may not entrench upon liberty in general tho' for example sake it fall severe on an individual Person But if a Prince be here importuned nay violated or his Houses advices be prest upon him by
concupiscible passion of desire and the irascible of fear and not from the cardinal virtues of prudence temperance justice and fortitude with humanity and veracity Do not these moral virtues evidence that men were created not only for a harmless but a beneficial Society And doth not the necessity which man hath of help in relation to his body shew he was not framed to live alone And in relation to his mind doth not temperance restrain desire and fortitude repress fear How doth temperance fit him to be contented with a little and so make needless the invading the rights of others How doth justice regulate his actions towards other men and so secure them from any violence from Him How doth humanity make him apt to relieve anothers necessities as justice did to preserve his rights How doth his veracity secure another in his conversation with him Nor did art or policy beget these virtues in mankind or nature but a God of nature implanted it in humane nature And can this Gentleman believe that the disorders that flowed from injustice were the mother of justice though it was often the mother of good civil laws against particularized acts of injustice Injustice would not have been perceived but as it was a deflection from natural justice or why doth he say every man naturally upon the fear he had of every other man was against every other man which made it reasonable for every man to secure himself by way of anticipation i. e. as I conceive without any other provocation or injury but his own fear by force and wiles to master all others till he saw no other power great enough to endanger him His Master Thucydides sets forth much of this but allows not the practice If this be not prodigy I know not what is for if this be true we will repeat it again What a step-mother is Nature for we will not now talk of a God or intelligent mind distinct from and antecedent to all visible beings or of invisible powers which seem to him but as scarr-crows set up to fright fearful and ignorant men who made this kind of creature Man miserable by its primier designation and yet by or upon experience of his own misery If Mr. Hobbs way of stating this question be true the creature is wiser than the Creator how came a man reasonable enough by law and penalties to find a means lodged in himself to divert the evil which nature had subjected him unto Thus the effect seems superior to the cause for if man can thus excel his own nature how comes it about that other creatures cannot do the like or how comes man to be wiser by submitting his own understanding and strength to a Governors to provide better for himself than Nature did Did Nature produce him to a state of war and he find out the benefit of Society in peace Pray then why should not a horse do the like and find he was turned out of the orchyard where was long grass into the barren Common for cropping the trees Or why should not bees and wasps make leagues together and one give some of their honey to avoid hostility By all this we see how fatal it is for men of strong natural parts and good literature to entertain false principles and how false principles about Nature produce falser about policy Judge Hales hath convinced this Gentleman in his Origination of Mankind in point of natural Philosophy and the Lord Chancellor Hyde hath done it as well about his Politicks and Dr. Parker in his Ecclesiastical Policy hath shewed the absurdity of this Gentleman's opinion about Religion and Civil Policy and therefore I will rather give men warning of him than enter farther the lists or I would not farther fall upon one whom so many others have attackt so masterfully and with success God made Government his own ordinance and made Governors owe their Authority to him for it is by him that Princes reign for Promotion neither comes from the East nor from the West for it is God that sets up one and pulls down another He cloathed them with power and majesty God vested Government with power and majesty as the necessary supports of all Government for without these no personal virtues of the Prince would be able to support him or with a heady and mistaking multitude to gain that obedience which Government cannot be without Power Power therefore is singly lodged in him or them in whom the Soveraignty is lodged And if there be no Soveraignty or a power from which there is no appeal there is no Government for the rights of Soveraignty must be uncontroulable If God himself were not omnipotent men would not be guided by his wisdom for we see men questioning his decrees every day not content with his justice for how many disrelish his determination of not resisting evil Governors tho' it were made in behalf of themselves as the best means to secure their common peace and publick interest A great part of the office of a Governor is to reward and punish yet herein if power fenced it not every one would share with his Prince or dispense these themselves and become Judges or give sentence nay be Executioners too in their own cases Where rewards and punishments are not well dispens'd loyalty and faithfulness will both quit a Court. And Boccalini makes those virtues rather to retire to a Dog-kennel than return thither for that creature says he hath some gratitude and sense of being well used and therefore these virtues quitted the Court and went thither Thus the dispensing rewards and punishments being so eminent a branch of a Princes power he should trust it in no hand to distribute but his own All natures but Gods wanting somewhat are moved or attracted by rewards and deterred by punishments for punishments were added unto laws that whom conscience would not restrain present pain and loss might Multitude of subjects in some one or some nigh Countries is a foundation of greater greatness than largeness of disperst dominion This hath enabled France to ruin Spain Majesty Majesty is but the glory of power reflected or it is a result of the amplitude of greatness directed to bring awe and reverence towards authority for Majesty is but a seeming pageantry when power upholds it not and where every one can approach it without respect for says the Politicians Majestas major é longinquo for when a Prince by some unseeming familiarity of some Favorite abates or lets fall his own Majesty every one that thinks as well of himself as the Prince doth of the Favorite forgets duty and becomes sawcy And thus when a Prince abates of the reverence which ought to be paid to his person he seldom finds it paid unto his affairs It is good for a Prince by a reputation of mildness lodged in him rather by his discretion than natural temper to abate in his subjects in general the fear of his power for that
which we call religion which should tye as by a law every rational creature to perform the justice of his nature which other creatures observe by instinction man by choice So as a law is but a rule what things the creature should follow and what fly Thus the eternal Wisdom wrote natural laws in the very essence or rationality of man and by this rationality this creature was capacitated to receive from him positive laws When man offends against the natural law his conscience checks him and when he offends against the positive some known revelation or unquestioned tradition or written word of God must be his accuser Hence laws usually are divided into Moral which are those which flow from the law of nature or ceremonial which are those which flow from some positive law of God or judicial which should imitate the justice of Natural laws and were given to some men as unto the Jews by God himself or from the law of Nature and the rationality of man unto all others and are framed by men in order to the exercise of justice among themselves and are made as conformable as may be unto the law natural and eternal and have for their end the common good of that society which is under the authority of the Head or Soveraign of that society So as every such law ought to be honest and possible to be kept every such law containing in it two powers viz. directive in what it prescribes and coactive in punishing offenders against it Justice natural and civil Now justice is but a performance of some act which some law requires And as we said on the former head religion was either natural or instituted so we must say on this it is either natural or civil Indeed natural justice is an essential part of natural religion and so is inbred in man Why natural justice so far exceeds civil and that is the reason natural justice so far exceeds civil or what human laws prescribes For human laws cannot extend their sanction or rewards and punishments unto desires and concupiscences out of which all civil injustices arise and some offences or injustices seem unto Legislators so trivial that there is no law or sanction against them Yet natural justice prohibits even such offences which made the great Naturalist and Statesman Cicero say It was a narrow or a mean thing to be just only as far as civil law required quam angusta est innocentia ad legem bonum esse or quanto latius officiorum patet quam juris regula for humanity and liberality c. are left out of the publick Tables of the Romans Indeed both Tables of the Decalogue are but parts of natural justice so as a man may be a good Citizen Vir bonus est is qui consulta Patrum c. when he is not a good man or when he narrows that justice which he owes to men unto civil sanctions Justice is concerned in making executing obeying laws 1st In making them Justice in making for the Legislator must sincerely be convinced the law is beneficial for the Government and for the Governed for if it serve only personal ends as that the Prince and Governors by it singly reap the advantage and that it conduce not to common good it wants the best character of a law The like it doth if an unruly multitude force a law from him in prejudice of the good constitution and strength of the Government or Royalty Secondly if laws be made unto good ends Executing and not executed they become a snare for usually the breach of a civil law carries with it some profit and advantage and so one man to his loss observes that law which another through his disobedience gains by And non-execution of laws leads men to the neglect of the Government for they think it a foolish thing to be tied by that cord Obeying Laws which others so easily break Thirdly therefore when laws are made subjects must make a conscience to obey them for it is a debt they owe unto their Prince and unto the whole society and to every particular man of it So as a Legislator must make a law no snare a Magistrate must impartially execute it and a Subject conscientiously obey it The law of nature is the rule of all human and civil laws Tully could say Nos legem bonam a malà nullà aliâ ratione nisi Natura norma dividere possumus And Baldus Imbecillitas est humani intellectus in quacunque causa legem quaerere ubi rationem naturalem invenires A law therefore must be suitable to religion agreeable to the natural not humorous disposition of the people and must tend unto publick good And thus civil and judicial laws made by men are manifest proofs of moral laws written by God in man for they ever confirm those laws and conform themselves thereunto and are adapted to civil cases only Laws therefore are made both in defence of the Government and Governors Laws in defence of the Government and Subject as well as of the Governed in their several concerns of life liberty property and good name fame or reputation and the breach of these laws falls under several penalties higher or lower Penalties as the offence is for it is treason and misprision of treason to offend against the Government or Prince and it is excommunication to offend against Ecclesiastical authority and it is murther and felony or a capital punishment to take away a mans life or rob him of his goods and he falls under a pecuniary or corporal punishment that robs a man of his liberty or good name Thus justice whether it be political or private is the defence of the Head and Body in society How laws oblige the Prince and how the Subject and obliges the Prince by the directive part of the law tho' not the coactive for therein he is subject only unto God to be just unto and tender of the subject and by the directive and coactive part of it obligeth the Subject uniformly and impartially to honor aid and obey him in his government Nay a man by it is defended from himself as well as from others for men by excesses and penury are often unjust unto themselves and unto their relations And this restrains a man from using even his own to his own private detriment as well as unto the publicks for the publick has a right both in his person and private possessions and all this ne Respublica capiat aliquid detrimenti This virtue guides men in peace and regulates them in war and frames all sound council It is that in the Politick Body which consent of parts makes in the Natural for it gives amongst the members thereof a fellow-feeling of each others state It makes the foot content to support the body and the body the head and the head to influence by its animal spirits all the members It admonishes the stomach not wilfully to
India and a Company to govern that trade the Pepper and Callicoes we bring home for nine pence would cost us two shillings or half a crown if brought us by the Hollanders And this is proved too clearly unto us by the Spice trade they have engrossed and cast us out of at the price of so much infidelity and blood And our East-India and Turky Ships besides the Mariners wherewith they must be manned are a great security to the Nation The standard of Coin A Prince never loses either in his revenue or trade in keeping up the standard of his money for flutter as much as they will all trade is reduced to the intrinsick value of the coyn To cry it up in those conjunctures of â—â—â—e when a Prince is to pay and to decry it when he is to receive is a kind of robbing his own Bankers or Subjects but it is a short liv'd policy and Strangers will retort it upon himself But nothing can be more fatal to a State than to break assignments made on publick faith It must be the child of some such folly I would not describe It looks like the despair of some young Gamster that sets all he is worth upon one hazard To get advantages by exchanges of money Exchange of money or bills and bills of credit is a politick prudence for if France overballance us in their particular trade they will get by us likewise in their exchange of money Which concerns Ambassadors and Gentlemen travelling as well as Merchants to observe Government is upheld by treasure Treasure and therefore treasure hath many swoln titles given to it as that it is the sinew both of war and peace the ornament of the one and the strength of the other or the organ of motion and action unto both Neither greatness nor honour nor security will be maintained without it It is like food unto the body when it fails sttrength soon doth so and weakness appears for says Tacitus Diminutionem imperii doces si fructus quibus Respublica sustinetur diminuantur If neither family nor city can be maintained without it much less soveraignty over a whole people The father of every family the chief Magistrate of every town must in his person attendance habitation and dyet appear distinguishable from others by those sensible ensigns of honour which beget awe and reverence Princes therefore were Lords paramount of the land they governed which made the Kings of Israel so great Herdsmen and to have occasion of so many men to reap their harvest Not only William the Conqueror but says Sir Edward Cooke by the laws of King Alfred the ancient Kings who were Saxons Patrimonial had all the Lands of England in demeasnes Princes therefore never more wounded their government nor lessened their reverence than when they parted with their Patrimonial estates and depended on subsidiary aids even for their own subsistance of their subjects Subsidiary for that lessened their honour and raised the pride and consequently begot contumacy in their people for it is natural for men to think whom they freely give unto they oblige not considering that the same duty belongs unto the Politick Body as unto the Natural where every member must send somewhat unto that which we call the habit of the body or the soveraignty or else the members themselves will dwindle away Prerogatives of Princes were a kind of treasure to them Prerogatives a kind of treasure for Tenures and Services Wardships Purveyances and Carriages c. were in nature of a revenue and set forth their honour eased their charge and preserved the dependancies of subjects on them If we would look back into our own History and consider how either the neglect or some forced necessity or some false policy have wrung these from our Princes we may discern in a great measure our own present distempers The Conqueror brought in with him great and independent Lords Lords assistant to the Conqueror rather as assistants than subjects or as men to divide the prey with him and therefore unto many of these he gave large territories with that which the French call Basse Justice so as their Tenants depended in a manner as much on them as they did on the King as Lord paramount This bred the Barons wars Barons wars for though the Barons would tyrannize over their vassals yet they agreed the soveraign Prince must be made as weak and limited as possibly they could Then to weaken this crown unfortunately rises a dispute of Regal title even in the Royal family The dispute of title betwixt the two Royal families and the red Rose and the white become ensigns of a long and bloody civil war And as men took part with either of these upon successes they were to be rewarded and by the various changes the crown even by its prosperities was rather weakned than strengthened These Lay-quarrels begat a harvest for the then ambitious and gripple Clergy so as the Crown both by its Lords Spiritual and Temporal was in a great measure lorded over This made that deep sighted Prince Henry 7. Henry the seventh brought to the crown by these Powers who vindicated his Wife's title from an usurping and bloody Uncle Richard the third to dread even that power that had set him up and so as subtilly as he could by cherishing the Commons against them to undermine it and he foreseeing the necessity of treasure to strengthen the crown grew a legal Tyrant For he then shewed the subject what a severe rod the penalties of necessary and wholsome laws were in the hands of the Prince if used without clemency And could he have renewed his age or that his long raign had been by time doubled most probably he would have made the crown a substantive Henry 8. His son Henry the eighth though he was of as great understanding and greater literature yet not being equal in King-craft but transported with vanity and popular glory whether by accident and passion which abounded in him or by design it is unknown he fell upon the State Spiritual as his Father had done on the Temporal and with more violence shook their greatness and invaded their revenues in the Abbots or the Monasteries and Convents which had he converted to the maintenance of the crown as he did by profusely giving away their Lands unto the maintenance of the acts he had done or in casting off Papal supremacy the Father and the Son we may probably say would have made the crown for ever stood less in need of the subjects extraordinary supplies which are seldom free bounties but often hard bargains through the diminution of prerogative The succeeding Princes Edward 6. Q. Mary Q. Elisabeth the one a Minor the other two under disputable titles because condemned even by the Father and that in the heighth of his power by the consent of his two Houses of Parliament and the one of these Ladies being to