Opinion must concede in order to Publick Peace So that here your imprudent Zeal on false Notions of Loyalty hurries you into Principles absolutely Seditious and Destructive to the Legal Constitution of all Governments and particularly that which the Kings of England have themselves established Dyscher Well to put an End to this Disquisition upon our own Laws what have you to say for the Legality or fulness of your Settlement from the Usages or customary Practice of Nations Eucher I hope you do not require me to corrade a vast heap of Historical Instances National Decrees and Determinations of Civilians hereupon This would be to repeat whole Libraries to an evidence of one particular Custom But your own reading will inform you that under the pressing exigences of Anarchy and Ruin the Superiors or Agents of all People have ever authentically contracted a change of Government and Governours as to them then appeared necessary to the Common Preservation Dyscher 'T is so indeed upon Conquests which some have pretended here to the shame reproach and forfeiture of their Country as well as in contradiction to common Sense the pretences of your King and the Sense of your Parliament But where there are no Conquests 't is not so easie to adduce such Custom of Nations Eucher That the Nation was not conquered is most evident yet that King William in the Military Course grew stronger than King James who disbanded all his Forces and stooped to the prevailing Prince is as evident nor was this any False Doctrine in the sense of the Nation But to assert that hereby alone the Right of the Crown accrued to King William even without the consequent Admission and Contract of the Nation had he pleased to have taken it on the meer Right of the Sword is what is indeed contrary to all Law and Reason For the meer force or victory of the Sword gives no Right or Authority even over a vanquished People till they federally resign to the Conqueror and then much less doth it so in a Nation not conquered But to omit the Laws of pure Conquests there are instances enough of Abdications Cessions and Desertions as many I believe and more than of simple and proper Victories to set out the sense of all Nations by For upon all such the places quitted admitted such consequent Settlements as the straits they were cast into would permit as is manifest in the leaving of Garrisons Holds or Countries And the truth is there is the same reason upon all proper Conquests and other Surrendries that legitimates the admission of a Change viz. the necessity of preserving the Publick Body from ruins and devastations Dyscher I do not remember indeed any ininstance to the contrary in the practices of Nations for they perhaps have been and are as bad as we ready to for shift themselves upon any pinch but generally careless of and perfidious to their unfortunate Princes Interests But what Reason can you shew for it in our Case which is so very plain and obvious that we were at liberty to have preserved our Sovereign and our selves together and if so how can this Settlement be admitted for legal or be reputed full against the so just Claims of our real Sovereign Eucher Here again you transgress the proper limits of a private Judgment when you take upon you to say that we i. e. our Convention could have secured King James in his Throne and this Nation in its Rights and Properties But in the main point where you stick viz. the Consent of King James and your Prince of Wales you are very unreasonable For shall he who at last put all his Subjects into confusion by his leaving the Government hinder us from settling till he give us his Consent Or must the Consent of a Infant be waited who if he ever was or yet is is in the custody and disposal of an Enemy King who would settle him and us too with a witness if he had but a lucky Wind and a fair Opportunity It is possible that an offended Prince may meditate revenge on a People that will not yield up all to the insatiable claims of boundless Prerogative And Desertion would be the cheapest surest and severest way of revenge if they must never settle again till he please to authorize them and this truly would be the strangest of all Prerogatives There are also that say that King James's Priests counselled and his Queen engaged him to go off on this very account that we might fall into such Plagues thro' our Divisions and unsettled Looseness as should enable him to return with an absolute plenitude of Arbitrary Power But not to depend on uncertain fames with their oblique constructions what can the legal language of that Cession speak to his Loyal People but this I have disbanded my Army and will not contest it with the Sword I shift for my self and must leave you to shift for your selves and settlement as you can Since I yield to my fears and necessities so may you If even a Natural Parent to save his own life leaves his Son to the mercy of his Enemies the Son may contract Peace and subjection to that his Fathers Enemy for his own preservation nor can the meer Natural Relation and Interest of the Father in the Son vacate moral Obligation of such Contract till that power of his Enemy over his Son be otherwise legally dissolved by the Laws of War Redemption or otherwise So that tho' we should allow you that all King James's Enemies sinned in procuring this new Settlement upon us all yet his most Loyal Subjects may most innocently submit from the reason of the thing and the virtual Concession hereunto in the voice of his Desertion which must be supposed as made to his faithful Adherents tho' not to his Enemies So that should he ever return again he could not in any justice punish the meer submission to this new Settlement in those who contributed nothing to it And you that refuse it refuse that liberty which his Desertion legally gave you by all Civil Interpretations All which put together should be of great might with you to admit the present submission as Legal Nor ought his resumed Contests to be taken as Legal or just bars to the contrary For if there were such a Virtual and Legal Concession in his Desertion the Estates of his People taking the benefit of it have provided for us a Settlement upon that Concession which being passed and confirmed the supposed revocation of that Concession by a new War or Inauthoritative Declarations is null void and unobliging And so here was tho' not a Verbal yet a Legal Censent of King James which is as much as you your selves can in reason require to the justifying our present Submission and to the plenitude of our present Settlement Dyscher * T. B's 2d Lett. p. 21. These are pretty tricks to catch Dotterils But above all your most amazing pretence for your Cause
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
valid yet because of their actual Omission it wanted an Ecclesiastical Effect Lev. 10. So when a Statute of Deprivation requires the Church to eject Recusants from their Stations if the cause be necessary or just the Statute is valid to oblige the Conscience of the Church to an executive and concurrent obedience yet if the Church will by no means yield to such command of the State whether just or unjust valid or invalid in its obligatory intentions it cannot actually pass into an Ecclesiastical Effect and Issue and all that the Civil Powers can do on the refusal is to subject the Church to temporal Punishments Nay in the same Genus of Civil Government the Decrees and Judgments of the Kings Courts notwithstanding their perfect justice and validity cannot have their Civil Effect if the subordinate officers neglect or refuse to execute them T is true there is a difference between the Civil obligations of Under-Officers to their Superiors in Secular Authorities and those of the Church to the Civil Powers in matters Ecclesiastical For that Civil Officers are obliged only to observe the Legal forms of process in the Orders of their Superiors and are not tied to enquire into the inner justice of those Orders But the Church when under any Laws or Commands of the State may and ought to judge for her self and her conscience toward God Whether the matters enjoyned her by the Laws be consistent with the Laws and Principles of Christianity and the Churches fundamental Constitution against which she is never to admit them to an Ecclesiastical Effect but must bear the penal Consequences with all meeknes and resignation And this is not only the Right and Duty of all Churches as sacred Corporations toward all humane laws in matters moral or Religious but of every single Christian also And if this be not admitted up goes Hobbism and the Civil Powers may enact Deprivations Excommunications and Anathema's for mens refusing the Alcoran Paganism Socinianisme and even Atheism it self and for owning the Scriptures Creeds and Sacraments But you that think us such a soft and waxen generation would have found this Right asserted even unto Martyrdom against all such deprivations had they been enacted upon causes apparently injurious or imposed on the Church For in the late Reign not only you but others also opposed the growth and menaces of Popery with a burning zeal when we had no present prospect of any thing but Fagots Dragons and most Christian Bridles And that all these Armies of Worthies should all of a sudden grow base abject and irreligious cannot easily I am sure not fairly be presumed But in cases which the Church judges equal she may concur and submitt and when she may so do it can be neither religious or prudential to provoke or incur a persecution by a needles and obstinate refusal which is our Sense upon the Causes and Law of the present Deprivations But is it not a pretty exception against this Concurrence because it is yielded by Submission not Authority For did I ever assert of an Authority in the Church to refuse her Duty against which certainly there lies no Authority And I told you †Sol. and Ab. pag. 28. that the Church here concurs by Submission as judging it her duty herein to yield to the State But in such Cases if you will needs require the Churches Authority I will remind you what I told you †Sol. and Ab. Pag. 29. last time that the Church has an Authoritative Right to judge in such Cases whether she may or must concur or no. And hence a Right essentially belongs to it to examin all the Causes of the Secular Demands so that if she finds there be no grave Reasons to move the Church to the required Severities she ought to disobey as my Lord Bishop of London well did when required to suspend Dr. Sharp indictâ Causâ c. And for this I alledged out of Nazianzen one of the Noblest Instances in all Antiquity wherein the Bishops of Cappadocia refused to depose or reject the canonically settled Bishop of Cesarea notwithstanding all Julians terrors and commands of which I wonder Dr. Hody took no notice But I add also that if the Church finds those Causes sufficient she may if necessary she must admit the Laws enforcing them and not wantonly pretend Authority against duty nor use her liberty for a cloak of maliciousness And I can never imagine that this Right of the Church was ever suspected much less opposed by any Powers or Legislators truly Christian But if Civil Powers will make irreligious Laws in maters Spiritual will you immediatly oblige the Christian Councils to invade the Senate House or Courts of Civil Judicature with Protestations against their Procedures before the Laws come home upon us and press us to actual Concurrence Surely the Primitive Christians did not so against the Edicts of Heathen Powers For tho' Christianity will warrant meek and petitionary Apologies yet will it not justifie sawcy Remonstrances and Prohibitions upon Legislators who must pass undisturbed and unaffronted in their measures and we must with all meekness of behaviour wait the eventual prosecution of the Laws if we cannot divert it by fair atonement and when it comes refusing calmly the required Sins commit our selves and Cause to him that judgeth righteously So that all your Harangues about running into Parliament House with Proclamations or Protestations for our against their Authority are injudicious immodest and seditious proposals tho' we had known the demands of the State to have been unlawful which we yet acknowledge to be otherwise And that we should cease to be a Church because we are not officiously rude to the Legislators who may sometimes happen to be causelesly unkind or hard hearted to us We are neither to precipitate our zeal manners confession or sufferings but let the will of God be done upon us when his own time comes Since even the vilest Laws of men have this obligation and validity upon the Consciences of Subjects to restrain all indecencies and disturbances against them and the Legislative For if the Senate has not Authority to oblige us to evil it has to modesty and abstinence from their Presence and Consultations But the Parliament thought their Authority alone sufficient to deprive the Bishops and did not ask nor think they wanted the concurrence of the Clergy to make their Act valid very well they did not think so And if you confine this sufficiency to a valid Obligation on the Church to submit and concur this opinion of the Parliament is very true tho' I believe they ground it not upon any mere pretended Arbitrary Despotick Power but upon the Weight and Sanctity of the Causes on which they founded the Law But if you think it the opinion of the Parliament that their Acts can actually pass into an Ecclesiastical Effect without Ecclesiastical Concurrence you fix an opinion on them rather to be charged with Non-sense than Falshood
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
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
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
as if he had said My Protestant Nobles Clergy Magistrates Officers and Souldiers do you actually fight for me execute all my Commands be passive under all my Contrivances against your Religion Laws and Liberties and when I have gained my ends I 'll make you all sworn Slaves and Papists or else Iâ—le melt your Grease for you But to return from this pertinent Sally as to the Law that I set it rightly as it stands at this Day from a long Descent is notorious to the World from the Judicial and received Determinations in Parliament and the King's Courts so often pleaded and alledged by the Advocates for our present Allegiance to whom and to whose Originals I therefore refer you Only I think fit here to relate the yet unpublished sense of a most judicious and excellent Person sent me before any Prints appeared on this Subject His words are these What I principally insist on is That our Law requires Subjection and Obedience to the Powers in being To prove this I shall here set down the words of Sir Edward Coke and in the Margin note the Authorities to which he refers Sir Edward Coke speaking of the Statute of the 25th of Edward the Third concerning Treason saith that this Statute is to be understood of a King in Possession of the Crown and Kingdom Vid. 11. Hen. 7. c. 1. For if there be a King Regnant in possession altho' he be Rex de Facto non de Jure yet is he Seignior le Roy 4 Edw. 4.1 Instit part 3. fol. 7. within the Purview of this Statute And the other that hath Right and is out of Possession is not within this Act. Nay if Treason be committed against a King de Facto non de Jure and after the King de Jure cometh to the Crown he shall punish the Treason done to the King de Facto and a Pardon granted by a King de Jure that is not also de Facto mark this for it concerns the Nation against wheedling Declarations is void So to the same effect Judge Hales his Pleas of the Crown pag. 11. This Argument saith my invaluable Friend I take to be of great force because the measures of Subjection are not the same in all Countreys but must be taken from the Laws and Customs of every Countrey Thus he And if you will impartially reflect upon your own Words in which you blame me for inferring that King James when he returns may punish Men for breaking Allegiance to King William these words concede it For if you admit unto me a breach of Allegiance in facts committed against King William you then presuppose an Obligation for Allegiance to him so broken and to break a Duty is punishable by the penal Sanction or virtue of that Law that makes it a Duty and therefore if not punished nor pardoned before the return of the King de Jure he may punish it as a Crime against his Laws And your taking the instance of the Oliverian Common-wealth to this your concession impudently admits Allegiance due thereunto and makes the Opposers thereof Traitors and Legally punishable by King Charles the Second for High Treason But in Truth no Laws had engaged Allegiance to O. C. or his Common-wealth as they have to Kings de facto And moreover if the Estates themselves in free and at that time and case extraordinary legal Parliament upon the antecedent Expiration and in utter Renunciation of that Common-wealth and all other Forms of Democracy recalled him it had been Treason to have opposed and Loyalty to have concurred in that their Restitution But I stated the Case of O. C. so clearly in our last Conference that I fancy it beyond the power of T. B. himself as spiteful as he is to parallel the Tenure of O. C. with that of King William whatsoever he may without Argument rant and rave to the contrary As for the Reproach of stirring up the Powers or the Mob against you I reply that you prevent me in that Intrigue your selves and I will give you any Form of Security either Sacred or Secular upon Soul or Body or Goods that I will never provoke them against you as much as your selves have done and still for ought I see persevere to do Dyscher We are very luckily fallen in again upon the mention of O. C.'s Authority and Settlement over us I pray let us review that Article For tho' T. B. for want of Argument cries out stark shame upon you and is once oh wonder ashamed for you in such a sort of Civility as he never vouchsafes himself how much soever he needs it because you will not be confuted by his Brass and Impudence and our Learned Pens I will see what Grace may be wrought in you by some Impartial Reflections of a softer Metal but of great weight You make a pretty sort of disparity between the Tenure and Settlement of King William and O. C. * Sol. Ab. g. 12 13. Because O. C. was not King as if the Charm lay in a word Call him Hospador if you will for me Is not the Duke of Muscovie King of that Countrey because he is called Duke It is the Authority and Power we are speaking of not by what Names it is called M. S. Reflex Eucher I took my self for a Conjurer nor will I endeavour to enchant you with words instead of things since your Temper will not hearken to the voice of the Charmer charm he never so wisely And therefore without troubling the Peace of that great Duke you may please to remember that there is an old received and approved distinction between the Titles and Characters of King and Tyrant The former is he that Reigns according to the Laws and Forms of Civil Constitutions and his Character and Authority is Grateful and Honourable The latter Rules by meer force oppression and bondage without any Civil Form of Tenure or Settlement by a power only potential not potestative and therefore without a proper Authority And this Character is in most especial manner given to Usurping Rebels as well as to Foreign Invaders to destroy which Tyrants the Universal Sense of Nations ever judged it lawful because they have no Form of Title but that of the Sword Violence and forcible Entry Now King William holds this Sovereignty by the former legal way of National Contract and Civil Establishment but O. C. had no other Mode of Profession but Tyrannical and so had no legal which is the only Form of Authority And yet beside perhaps the very Style of King is necessary to the real Sovereigns of England in order to their Claims of Allegiance by virtue of the old Oath and Laws tho' when new Laws and Constitutions extinguish the old a new Allegiance may be due to a new Sovereign under any other Titular Style But if this Style be thus necessary to oblige our Allegiance by the old Laws then for want of that very Character no Allegiance was due
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
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
no more divinely instituted than the lowest Orders of Levi tho' he was to higher Services Nor is the Doctor less mistaken in his extraordinary Esteem and Elogy of the Annual Expiation as more noble than any Episcopal Functions For notwithstanding all its Solemnities and Operations yet its highest Excellency was but Typical of that Grace which was not given by Moses but by Jesus Christ And all its actual present Energy reached no further than a legal imaginary Cleansing of the Body of the Jews and this only for one Year past and that only for the securing him in the Temporal benefits promised in that Law But our Priestly Functions are not merely Typical of Grace not yet given but both commemorative and exhibitory also of that Grace which hath already appeared for the Salvation of all Men and consecrates the Souls and Bodies of Men unto Immortality not to mention the extraordinary Measure of the Spirit collated in the especial Acts of Episcopal Ordinations In all which interiour Sanctifications tho' there is no Transubstantiation yet is there a mystical Union betwixt Christ and his Members by the illuminating Communion of the Holy Spirit For which truth it is needful that we contend tho' I confess it was needless for him to contend against it And yet further supposing all this had been right which the Doctor hath dictated yet here arises another Infelicity in his Logic For tho' God might admit an intruded High-Priest yet it does not follow that Men may admit an intruded Bishop for can Man pretend to all the Authorities of God God is indeed superior to all his own Institutions and may dispense with them or ratifie Violations of them as he did the violent Successions in the Kings of Israel But does it follow that Men can lawfully without any Divine Dispensation given and granted admit the Violations of his Laws and the perverters of that Hierarchy which he has made organical to the Sanctity and Salvation of his Church Nay further yet the Doctor is very unaccurate in his very State of the Question which properly is not whether any Man may lawfully succeed an Ecclesiastic deposed by a Lay-power for if we grant that there can be any such Lay-deposition no doubt the Succession may be lawful but the Question is whether there can be any Ecclesiastical Deposition inflicted on Spiritual Orders by a Lay-power This is that we and our Fathers complain of that the Lay-powers enact Spiritual Censures of Suspension and Deprivation which your Ecclesiastics admit as regular and valid which were they so we should not quarrel at the Successions This I am sure is our Question whatsoever that of the Baroccian Treatise is if this differs from ours then in that respect the Treatise is impertinently adduced in our Case Besides the Question is not whether a Person duly invested with an Ecclesiastic Office of God's Institution may not be deposed by any Lay power For if God in the Jewish Church did subject their Ecclesiastics to a Lay-deposition no doubt in the Nature of the thing it might be lawful But the Question is whether first God did so subject the Jewish Ecclesiastics to such a Lay-authority And secondly supposing that God had so subjected their Ecclesiastics the next Question is whether he hath in like manner so subjected the Christian Hierarchy For if there be any specific Difference or intentional Disparity in the Nature and Purposes of the Jewish and Christian Religions if there have been such Changes admitted by God in the Authorities of one which have not been so conceded upon the Authorities of the other then the Argument from the Jewish doth not conclude upon the Christian Hierarchy And therefore by the Doctor 's leave not only the Divinity of the Institution but the Nature of the Offices and the Rules of Tenure and Succession instituted by God in his Church are to be considered in this Debate For to put the matter into a short Theory I think it fairly possible to conceive that the Jewish Religion in what it was peculiarly Jewish was only of a carnal Sanctity in Order only to Temporal Fruitions and so might be under the Conduct of Temporal Powers that are the Supreme Guardians of all Temporal Enjoyments but the Christian Religion is purely Spiritual not subordinated to Temporal Ends and so not under the like Authority of Temporal Powers Now whatsoever are the civil Authorities about matters Christian I suppose the Essential Differences of our Religion from the Jewish will bar the Argument for the same Rules of Subjection And if you please upon another Consultation to propose the matter to the Doctor 's second Thoughts I will be at the pains of repeating my Observations hereupon †Sol. and Ab. Pag. 21 22. First that the whole Institution of the Levitical Law was not of a Spiritual but carnal Sanctity yielded them by God somewhat in opposition and somewhat in conformity to the Aegyptian or other foreign Religions among whom the Priesthood had been long subjected to and perhaps first instituted by the Scepter And herein the Supreme Judgments in Civils upon the Law and Oracular Responses upon Consultations about Peace War and Temporal Actions and Successes were essential to the Authority of the Pontificate And yet we find this High-Priest not subject to any ordinary Power till Kings were also given this People after the manner of the Nations among whom the Mitre was subject to the Crown All which put together makes Abiathar 's Deprivation by a Temporal Power under that Constitution Legal But from the beginning it was not so Then there were Priests who till the Flood had the Government of the World without any Civil or Military Power and that Priesthood was in all its Intentions Spiritual So that when our Saviour came not only to restore but even to refine upon the primitive Rules he restored the Priesthood from Vassalage and founded his Hierarchy not in Princes but Apostles not inarmed but in unarmed Powers But if among the Nations of old the carnal Priesthoods were subject to Arbitrary and Imperial Powers and God conceded the Jews Kings with such Power after that Gentile manner the Jewish High-Priests thereupon became Subject not only to a Judicial but Imperial Authority and so legally deprivable at the pleasure of the secular Prince so far at least that these Censures might be effectually valid tho' not always good and just And hence all the Changes of the High-Priests violently and arbitrarily made by heathen Princes in the Jewish Pontificate seem to be legally and regularly valid ex jure Imperii toties quoties and so are nothing at all to the Case of an uncanonical Deprivation or the Doctor 's purpose But our Priesthood has nothing Civil in it nor is by God subjected to the Arbitrary Empire of Princes that so we should think our selves obliged to bow down our Faith and Freedom to such feeble Principles of Spiritual Bondage and Pusillanimity Eucher But a little to
purely on that account that contradiction had never been recorded to his infamy but his praise for ever But as to your idle Question about complying with Usurpers which like Altar against Altar is the Incipe Maenalios of your whole Ditty as it has received full answers already so here 't is nothing to our present purpose since our discourse now is founded on a Supposition of a due and full Settlement of Legal Powers in the State which ought not to be charged with formal Usurpation Dyscher We will then let alone at present the Disquisition of our capacity and proceed further in our Enquiry concerning your Churches Concurrence For least the Dean and the Chapter should not be strong enough Did they then in their Convocation make the least scruple or vote that their Concurrence was necessary to that Statute No not a syllable But you tell us how they did it The †Sol. Ab p. 28. Silence of the Convocation under the Statute of Deprivation argues their opinion to be that they were in this to yield to the State This is according to the old Proverb Silence gives consent And at this Rate the Statute of abolishing Episcopacy in Scotland must be supposed to have it's validity from the Concurrence of the Bishops and Clergy there for they too are silent And some of the inferior Clergy there But in good truth have any Clergy men in England complyed to an enacted abolition of Episcopacy here but not half so many as in England have complyed I pray you to answer me in plain terms whether you do not think the Parliament in England to have as great Power as the Parliament of Scotland And consequently might abolish the whole Order of Episcopacy in England as they have done in Scotland And for their Silence it is a strange Plea Have they liberty to assert without danger I mean in England as well as Scotland And if Silence perforce argues Consent then they are the freest Subjects of the world in France and in Turkey whose Mâ—tes are happier by this Argument and have greater Authority than our House of Commons I thought Authority could not be exerted by Silence Tho the Turk will have his Executioners to be mute he cannot command them by his Silence Doth the King say nothing when he refuses a Bill Or doth he return them a decent answer with promise of Consideration If the King says nothing when both Houses present a Bill for the Royal Assent this is a refusal of that Bill So that it is not in all Cases you see that Silence gives consent indeed in no Case of Authority That was a saying only adapted to the grant of some private favours and is but a Jest or Complement at the best When the Church saw the Bill of Deprivation pass wholly and solely in the Name and by the Authority of the State they ought to have entred their Protestation and asserted their own Right Their Silence in that Case was an yielding up and betraying their Right as it is if a Peer does not protest against any vote that passes his consent to it is implyed And therefore the Churches Silence in that Case is so far from being an asserting of their Right that it is against the common Sense and Practice of mankind so much as to alledge it M. S. Reflex you call in the Convocation for help And first you tell us what your worthy Conformists did and what was their opinion But this is just the Proverb Ask my fellow if I am a Thief But say you their sending a Convocation shews their Subjection and condemns Recusancy as an Error But the silence of the Convocation you think will work Miracles for that argues their opinion to be that they were in this to yield to the State And thus we are utterly undone with the Argument of Lovers and Fools Silence gives consent There must be many other concurrent circumstances before the least consent can be presumed from Silence For otherwise it is often a sign of indignation scorn sullennes yea even of obstinate denial it self And what they meant by their Silence you may better guess when you have resolved this Quaere whether you can reasonably think that they would have chosen him for their Archbishop whom they refused for their Prolocutor But what if they were not so silent as here you make them 'T is pity your memory is not better for thro' forgetfulness you give in evidence against your self for you tell us of a motion in the lower house of Convocation for the Restitution of the Bishops and then suspended Clergy Now would any men take petitioning for men for appearing against them But what if there had been none of this Were ever Bishops deposed by Slence T. B. Sec. Lett. pag. 39. Eucher By what Arguments soever you are undone that is to your selves but I am sure I can find in you but few Arguments of Love or Wisdom in this clamorous Rant which seems designed in spite to the poor Proverb lest your Silence should seem to consent But since it is now my turn to break Silence I will speak to this point but this once and if you will not I will for ever hereafter hold my peace First then I must it seems talk of Silence of which I am taxed as if I had ascribed to it not only Consent but Authority too and actual Deprivation which are two points beyond the lines of the Proverb Consider we then at first the proverbial Importance here in the Carriage of the Convocation We were * Sol Ab. pag. 28. enquiring into the Sense of the Churches in common which you excepting against challenged a Sense of our Convocations and I tell you That their Silence under the Statute of Deprivation argues their opinion to be that they were in this to yield to the State But I well observing that bare Silence is Non-action and mere nothing and in it self simply of no determinate signification set such other positive Acts in †Grot. de Jure c. l. 2. c. 4. Parag. 5. conjunction with which this Non-action or Silence might legally and morally be interpreted to a consent of yielding herein to the State To this purpose I premised the general Conformity of most Bishops and Clergy and Laity that our sending a Convocation at their Majesties Precept shows that we own Subjection to them and condemns the Recusancy as an incapacitating Error for so I meant by softer forms of expression that I might not gaul you and so I conjoyn the Silence of the Convocation with those other positive indications that it might joyntly ground a legal Argument that in their Judgment they ought to yield to the State So that you had united Circumstances enough to have fore-strangled your Cavils if your prejudice had not blinded you On the Session of the second Convocation the Recusants were in a State of actual Suspension and the Day of Deprivation drew on Now this
and Damnation not required by the word or law of God must in their own nature be And thus in the ancient Church all rigorous Doctrines which made sins where God hath made none draw after them inevitable Separations and so became Heretical Dyscher Well how doth this affect us Eucher I am afraid in all your Principles which make our present Allegiance Illegal and Irreligious Dyscher I pray form them into propositions and make your convictive Strictures upon them if you can Eucher I take no delight in such an Employ It is no pleasure to me to wound or grieve you but as the setting before you the danger of your Principles may correct the precipitancy of your Zeal I will obey and observe your direction First then Maj. Whosoever teacheth Men not to be subject to the Human Constitution and the Authorities that are as Gods Ordinance teacheth practical Errors Min. But so you teach Men against the present Constitution and Authorities Ergo. Concl. You teach Men practical Errors Again in another Form Maj. Whosoever teacheth it to be Perjury to swear Allegiance to a new settled Sovereign upon the Desertion of the former to whom we had sworn Allegiance teacheth practical Errors Min. But such is your Doctrine contrary to Bishop Overals Convocation book Ergo. Concl. You teach practical Errors Again in another Form Maj. Whosoever teacheth to disobey Princes fully settled in a Government procured by ill means teacheth practical Errors Min. But so do ye in the Reasons of your present Recusancy Ergo Concl. You teach practical Errors Again in another Instance Maj. Whosoever teacheth Men not to pray for Kings and all that are in Authority teacheth Men Practical Errors Min. But so teach most of you in the Reasons of your present Recusancy Ergo. Concl. Most of you teach practical Errors Again in another Instance Maj. Whosoever teacheth Men presumptuously to speak evil of Dignities teacheth practical Errors Min. But so do most of you Ergo Concl. Most of you teach practical Errors Again in another Instance Maj. Whosoever excommunicates or teaches Men to refuse Communion with Men that have sworn Allegiance to Powers fully settled acts upon and teacheth practical Errors Min. But so most of you act and instruct Men against our Communion because we have sworn Allegiance to the Powers fully settled over us Ergo Concl. You act upon and teach Men practical Errors And now considering all wherein I have answered you what can you say hereto Dyscher I answer we do not deny any of your Major and general Propositions but we deny your Minors that we teach such Doctrines for our Recusancy But we teach that those Major Maxims do not affect our particular Case for that these are not Constitutions Authorities or Dignities fully settled on which the Church according to the Apostles requires respect and obedience Eucher This is like those prevaricating Salvo's which your Author of Christian Communion upbraids us with †Part 3. Ch. 5. in eluding general Precepts from influencing in particular Cases but to omit this I have however gained another advantage and success by my Advice viz. that in the matter of Allegiance you must quit your Pretensions to Ecclesiastical Doctrines as the grounds of your Recusancy Deprivation and Separation and consequently there is an End of your low and causeless Clamours for your glorious Passive Doctrines as the Cause of your Sufferings all the remaining Question now being between us whether the present Constitution be fully settled which is a Point of Law not Religion to be resolved by the State not the Church by the Court Civil not the Court Christian And hereupon such Civil Judgments are to be secured by Religion and Conscience while they stand reversed and so you are obliged to acquiesce in the Judgments of our Parliaments in this Point But while you oppose this upon Principles of Conscience consider the Danger of Heresie which lies before you Maj. Whosoever teacheth Men to oppose the Course of public Judgment in Civils upon private Opinions to the contrary teacheth Rules of Sedition against Civil Government it self and in them practical Errors Min. But you teach Men to oppose the public Judgment of the Nation for our full Settlement in the present State Ergo Concl. You teach Rules of Sedition against civil Government it self and in them practical Errors Or thus in another Form Maj. He that teacheth Men to act against confessed Principles of Truth ought to be exauctorated Min. But you teach Men to practice Disobedience contrary to those Principles of Truth which you are forced to confess Ergo Concl. You are to be exauctorated Now I cannot for my part see how you can avoid this Charge which your own rigours against us have extorted from me And yet I have urged it for no ill Ends but only to lay before you the ill Aspects of your Division upon those your very Principles in which you glory For here I can more justly enclose you with your Vindicator's Dilemma viz. that if you separate without Principles you are then Schismatical if upon Principles you incur Heresie But if this be so the Church and State may according to your own Rules eject you without a Synod which I compassionately beg you tenderly to consider Dyscher Well let our Cause be what it will in Fact or Opinion I look upon these Lay and Parliamentary Forms of Deprivation to be very dangerous to the Spiritual Franchises of the Church tho' we suppose that such servile and gradual Concurrences of the Church do give them an Ecclesiastical Effect for that they destroy out of the Faith of Christians the Sense of those Spiritual Liberties and Authorities of the Church that by a Divine Charter and an Apostolic Descent belong to her and instil a fatal Erastianism into men's Principles and for that Cause ought not to be received but censured by the Church for that your Party founds their Authority on this false Proposition that the Church and State of England are the same Society whereas there are many Subjects of the State that are no Members of the Church as Apostates Papists Heretics and all unbaptized Persons Tho' yet were this Hypothesis true that all the same persons were equally Members of the Church and State yet as they are a Church and spiritually sociated they must be governed by a Spiritual Authority and as a State by the Civil Power of the Sword nor must the identity of the People confound the Distinction of Powers Besides as we are a Church we are of Right sociated into the unity of the whole Catholic Church to be maintained by an uniform Ecclesiastical Conduct the only ligament of Catholic Communion but as we are a State the Catholic Church is not concerned with us to take any Cognisance of our Civil Procedures but if as a Church we corrupt the Ecclesiastical Government into Civil we break off and excommunicate our selves from the Catholic Unity by deserting the Catholic Forms and Ties of
Union Eucher As to that Principle of the Identity of Church and State and the Consequences Men draw from thence to assert the Right of Civil Authority in Spiritual Processes I leave it to them whose Heads are clear enough to justifie it But for my own part allowing your exceptions to the contrary yet our Case has justified it self ex naturâ Rei And I must further advertise you that this Church has long submitted to the use of such Powers over us and that fundamentally in Q. Elizabeth's Reformation and in many other matters in which the State had not so much pretence of Right or Necessity all which have passed uncensured by us but in this whether well or ill God must judge The Subscription of a Popish Clergy to avoid a Premunire drew after it such Acts of Parliament as thro' which we can make no provision for the Church noâ— move a question for her good without Royal License nor have so much freedom in our Concernments and Duties as every little Corporated Burrough has in it's voluntary Councils which tho' it be a tolerable Condition under a good King that has a Zeal for Christianity yet under an Irreligious King 't is an absolute Bondage and bar to the Primitive Purity Course and Vigour of Religion In the Reign of Edward the VI. they struck out the Ordinaries names out of all Processes Ecclesiastical and set in the Kings as if all Church Power had been derived from the Crown the non-payment of Tenths tho' omitted by mere neglect and not on any Principle of Opinion remains yet a Cause of Deprivation And those shackles which the State of old thought necessary to restrain us from Popery now the reasons of that Conduct are cessant become great Obstacles to the Primitive and Catholic Reformation of our yet remaining defects of which thâ—s Church upon a just liberty and Authority restored her would become the first Example and the noblest Standard Yet all this Subjection we have born in Silence tho' hereby only can Popery be reduced whensoever a Popish Conjuncture shall arise upon us and no Body has yet dared to offer a good mediation with the Public for a Temperament in these things And if our dulness herein has not been by us or you accounted Schismatical shall we be judged Schismatics in admitting these much more reasonable Deprivations in which the Lay-powers are concerned not only in point of Care and Interest but even in certain and undubitable measures of Right Dyscher How so Sir Eucher As the State is the Churches Hospital so a Corporal or Civil Communion is substrate to the visible Communion of the Church For tho' I allow you what you * Sol. ab pag. 25. justly challenge to the innocent a primitive fundamental and undeniable Right to good as well in common as in consecrated Places yet it is certain that in order to this Claim they must give all just security and assurance of their innocency upon Test demanded by the Civil Powers that are Guardians of these fundamental Liberties to all good Subjects of which innocency an Oath of Allegiance seems the most obvious proper and usual Form of security between Subjects and Sovereigns Otherwise the Civil Powers may restrain those Libeties of which they are the Trustees Thus a Civil Soveraign may prohibit and punish all conversation with the Enemies or Recusants of his Civil Authority Now conversation simply in it self alone is a secular communication but absolutely Fundamental to the Ecclesiastical which is a visible Communion in Spirituals Though then the Secular Authority alone as such does not touch the Spirituals yet it may upon just and legal Causes take away all that secular and local Communion that is substrate to the Ecclesiastical And he that may upon Recusancies of Subjection forbid all personal Communication with a Recusant may forbid it in any certain Place Time Matter or Measure and consequently at all such Times and Places when and where the Recusant may call upon him to attend in Spirituals But this Right and Authority of the Magistrate I lodge not in arbitrary will respectively but on the nature and merit of the provocation And the Right which the Christians have to the Liberty of their Sacred Functions is not peculiar to them as Christians by a Charter altogether unconditionally exempt from Civil Powers and so a Right of Gods positive constitution in the Church as a Society founded by Christ liable to no secular Reflections for any Cause whatsoever but is a common and natural Right to all Persons of clear and unspotted innocency as such to do that which is good originally due to them from the Creation And hence Civil Powers becoming Judges of our Morals and Innocency are Guardians of that natural Right but may justly deny it to others but will not approve their innocency by due Tests to the Public Peace of the Government to which Recusants therefore the rightful Capacity Ecclesiastical Communion is lost when the natural Right to Society is either totally or in the proper opportunities of sacred Communion justly denied by the Civil Powers And to say true he that by ill Principles or Practices deserves the loss and deprivation of all common Society much more deserves the deprivation of the Spiritual that stands as a Super-structure on the other And therefore if our ill merits Authorize the Powers to take away at the bottom the Foundation of our Religious Commuion they can tho' not directly and immediatly touch yet undermine the spiritual Structure by destroying its secular Foundation which lies within the Authority and Care of Civil Powers So that in this respect and form an Heathen Prince may rightly deprive seditious or disloyal Priests of the Priviledge of actually using their Ecclesiastical Functions by rightly denying them so much secular Society as is Fundamentally requisite to the exercise of them And thus far a Statute of Deprivation may have this Civil obligation that no Subject shall yield corporal Communion with Recusant Priests when they call him to sacred Offices any where and Laws may shut them out from consecrated Places that there may be no such local Society in them And if such Recusancy against civil Powers be notorious confessed or avowed then is such Act of State both just and civil only but at the same time the bottom of the Recusants Ecclesiastical Offices is righteously and validly taken away Dyscher Well well notwithstanding these Subtilties yet the Temporal Powers cannot take away the actual Relation between Priest and People tho' they may suspend or incapacitate them hereby from the actual Ministeries of their Orders And so hence accrues no Right to civil Powers to impose new Bishops on the Church Eucher There are two known Canonical Causes of depriving Spiritual Persons Immoralities and erroneous Principles So that if either of these hath merited and drawn after it a Forfeiture and Deprivation of all that secular and local Communion and Society which is necessary to the