as that with the same breath that you commend the Obedience and Submissiveness of those Nations of your own accord you make mention of Sardanapalus'r being deprived of his Crown by Arbaces Neither was it he alone that accomplished that Enterprise for he had the assistance of the Priests who of all others were best versed in the Law and of the people and it was wholly upon this account that he deposed him because he abused his authority and power not by giving himself over to cruelty but to luxury and effeminacy Run over the Histories of Herodotus Ctâ—sias Diodorus and you will find things quite contrary to what you assert here you will find that those Kingdoms were destroyed for the most part by subjects and not by foreigners that the Assyrians were brought down by the Medes who then were their subjects and the Medes by the Persians who at that time were like wise subject to them Your self confess that Cyrus rebell'd and that at the same time in divers parts of the Empire little upstart Governments were formed by those that shook off the Medes But does this agree with what you said before does this prove the obedience of the Medes and Persians to their Princes and that Jus Regium which you had asserted to have been universally received amongst those Nations What Potion can cure this brainsâ—… frenzy of yours You say It appears by Herodotus how absolute the Persian Kings were Cambyses being desirous to marry his Sister consulted with the Judges who were the Interpreters of the Laws to whose Judgment all difficult matters were to be referred What answer had he from them They told him They knew no Law which permitted a Brother to marry his Sister but another Law they knew that the Kings of Persia might do what they listed Now to this I answer if the Kings of Persia were really so absolute what need was there of any other to interpret the Laws besides the King himself Those superfluous unnecessary Judges would have had their abode and residence in any other place rather than in the Palace where they were altogether useless Agâ—in if those Kings might do what ever they would it is not credible that so ambitious a Prince as Cambyses was should be so ignorant of that grand Prerogative as to consult with the Judges whether what he desired were according to Law What was the matter then either they designed to humour the King as you say they did or they were afraid to cross his inclination which is the account that Herodotus gives of it and so told him of such a Law as they knew would please him and in plain terms made a fool of him which is no new thing with Judges and Lawyers now a days But say you Artabanus a Persian told Themistocles that there was no better Law in Persia than that by which it was Enacted That Kings were to be honoured and adored An excellent Law that was without doubt which commanded subjects to adore their Princes but the Primitive Fathers have long ago damned it and Artabanus was a proper person to commend such a Law who was the very man that a little while after slew Xerxes with his own hand You quote Regicides to assert Royalty I am afraid you have some design upon Kings In the next place you quote the Poet Claudian to prove how obedient the Persians were But I appeal to their Histories and Annals which are full of the Revolts of the Persians the Medes the Bactrians and Babylonians and give us frequent instances of the Murders of their Princes The next person whose authority you cite is Otanes the Persian who likewise killed Smerdis then King of Persia to whom out of the hatred which he bore to a Kingly Government he reckons up the impieties and injurious actions of Kings their violation of all Laws their putting men to death without a legal conviction their rapes and adulteries and all this you will have called the right of Kings and slander Samuel again as a teacher of such Doctrine You quote Homer who says that Kings derive their authority from Jupiter to which I have already given an answer For King Philip of Macedon whose asserting the right of Kings you make use of I 'le believe Charles his description of it as soon as his Then you quote some Sentences out of a fragment of Diogenes a Pythagorean but you do not tell us what sort of a King he speaks of Observe therefore how he begins that Discourse for whatever follows must be understood to have relation to it Let him be King says he that of all others is most just and so he is that acts most according to Law for no man can be King that is not just and without Laws there can be no Justice This is directly opposite to that Regal right of yours And Ecphantas whom you likewise quote is of the same opinion Whosoever takes upon him to be a King ought to be naturally most pure and clear from all imputation And a little after Him says he we call a King that governs well and he only is properly so So that such a King as you speak of according to the Philosophy of the Pythagoreans is no King at all Hear now what Plato says in his eighth Epistle Let Kings says he be liable to be called to account for what they do Let the Laws controul not only the people but Kings themselves if they do any thing not warranted by Law I 'le mention what Aristotle says in the Third Book of his Politicks It is neither for the Publick Good nor is it just says he where all men are by nature alike and equal that any one should be Lord and Master over all the rest neither where there are no Laws nor is it for the Publick Good or Just that one man should be a Law to the rest nor is it so where there are Laws nor that any one tho a good man thould be Lord over other good mâ—n nor a bad man over bad men And in the Fifth Book says he That King whom the people refuse to be govern'd by is no longer a King but a Tyrant Hear what Xenophon says in Hiero People are so far from revenging the Deaths of Tyrants that they confer great Honour upon him that Kills one and erect Statues in their Temples to the Honour of Tyrannicides Of this I can produce an 〈◊〉 witness Marcus Tullius in his Oration pro Milone The Grecians says he ascribe Divine Worship to such as kill Tyrants What things of this nature have 〈◊〉 my self seen at Athens and in other Cities of Greece How many Religious Observances have been inâ—…ted in honour of such men How many Hymns They are consecrated to Immortality and Adoration and their Memory endeavoured to be perpetuated And â—…ly Polybius an Historian of great Authority and Gravity in the Sixth Book of his 〈◊〉 says thus When Princes began to in 〈◊〉 their own Lusts and sensual Appetites then â—…doms
themselves of the Ignoranceâ— and Infirmity of Humane Nature they have conveyed this Doctrine down to Posterity as the foundation of all Laws which likewise all our Lawyers admit That if any Law or Custom be contrary to the Law of God of Nature or of Reason â—â—ought to be looked upon as null and void Whence it follows that tho it were possible for you to discover any Statute or other publick Sanction which ascribed to the King a Tyrannical Power since that would be repugnant to the Will of God to Nature and to right Reason you may learn from that general and primary Law of ours which I have just now quoted that it will be null and void But you will never be able to find that any such Right of Kings has the least Foundation in our Law Since it is plain therefore that the Power of Judicature was originally in the People themselves and that the People never did by any Royal Law part with it to the King for the Kings of England neither use to judge any Man nor can by the Law do it otherwise than according to Laws settled and agreed to Fleta Book 1. Cap. 17. It follows that this Power remains yet whole and entire in the People themselves For that it was either never committed to the House of Peers or if it were that it may lawfully be taken from them again you your self will not deny But It is in the King's Power you say to make a Village into a Burrough and that into a City and consequently the King does in effect create those that constitute the Commons House of Parliament But I say that even Towns and Burroughs are more Ancient than Kings and that the People is the People tho they should live in the open Fields And now we are extreamly well pleased with your Anglicisms COUNTY COURT THE TURNE HUNDREDA you have quickly learnt to count your hundred Jacobusses in English Quis expedirit Salmasio suam HUNDREDAM Picamque docuit verba nostra conari Magister artis venter Jacobaei Centum exulantis viscera marsupii Regis Quod si dolâ—si spes refulserit nummi Ipse Antichristi modò qui Primatum Papae Minatus uno est dissipare sufflatu Cantabit ultrò Cardmalitium melos Who taught Salmasius that French chatt'ring Pye To aim at English and HUNDRED A cry The starving Rascal flusht with just a Hundred English Jacobusses HUNDRED A blunder'd An out-law'd King 's last stock A hundred more Would make him Pimp for th' Anchristian Whore And in Rome ' s praise employ his poyson'd Breath Who threatn'd once to stink the Pope to death The next thing you do is to trouble us with a long Discourse of the Earls and the Barons to show that the King made them all which we readily grant and for that reason they were most commonly at the King's beck and therefore we have done well to take care that for the future they shall not be Judges of a free People You affirm That the Power of calling Parliaments as often as he pleases and of dissolving them when he pleases has belonged to the King time out of mind Whether such a vile mercenary Foreigner as you who transcribe what some Fugitives dictate to you or the express Letter of our own Laws are more to be credited in this matter we shall enquire hereafter But say you there is another argument and an invincible one to prove the Power of the Kings of England Superior to that of the Parliament the King's Power is perpetual and of course whereby he administers the Government singly without the Parliament that of the Parliament is extraordinary or out of course and limited to particulars only nor can they Enact any thing so as to be binding in Law without the King Where does the great force of this argument lye in the words of course and perpetual Why many inferior Magistrates have an ordinary and perpetual power those whom we call Justices of Peace Have they therefore the Supreme Power and I have said already that the King's Power is committed to him to take care by interposing his Authority that nothing be done contrary to Law and that he may see to the due observation of our Laws not to top his own upon us and consequently that the King has no Power out of his Courts nay all the ordinary power is rather the proples who determine all Controversies themselves by Juries of Twelve Men. And hence it is that when a Malefactor is asked at his Arraignment How will you be tried he answers always according to Law and Custom by God and my Country not by God and the King or the King's Deputy But the authority of the Parliament which indeed and in truth is the Supreme power of the people committed to that Senate if it may be called Extraordinary it must be by reason of its Eminence and Superiority else it is known they are called Ordines and therefore cannot properly be said to be extra ordinem out of order and if not actually as they say yet vertually they have a perpetual power and authority over all Courts and ordinary Magistrates and that without the King And now it seems our barbarous terms grate upon your Critical ears forsooth whereas if I had leisure or that it were worth my while I could reckon up so many Barbarisms of yours in this one Book as if you were to be chastiz'd for them as you deserve all the School-boys Ferulers in Christendom would be broken upon you nor would you receive so many Pieces of Gold as that wretched Poet did of old but a great many more Boxes o' th' ear You say 'T is a Prodigy more monstrous than all the most absurd Opinions in the world put together that the Bedlams should make a distinction betwixt the King's Power and his Person I will not quote what every Author has said upon this subject but if by the words Personam Regis you mean what we call in English the Person of the King Chrysostome who was no Bedlam might have caught you that it is no absurd thing to make a distinction betwixt that and his power for that Father explains the Apostles command of being subject to the Higher Powers to be meant of the thing the Power it self and not of the Persons of the Magistrates And why may not I say that a King who acts any thing contrary to Law acts so far forth as a private person or a Tyrant and not in the capacity of a King invested with a Legal Authority If you do not know that there may be in one and the same man more Persons or Capacities than one and that those Capacities may in thought and conception be severed from the man himself you are altogether ignorant both of Latin and Common sense But this you say to absolve Kings from all sin and guilt and that you may make us believe that you are gotten into the Chair voâ—r self which you have pull'd the Pope
meddle with except when you make Soloecisms is Grammar still VVhosoever therefore he be though from among the Drâ—gs of that common People that you are so keen upon for as for those men of Eminency amongst us whose great Actions evidenced to all men their Nobility and Vertue and Conduct I won't disgrace them so much as to compare you to them or them to you but whosoever I say among the Drâ—gs of that common People has but suck'd in this Principle That he was not born for his Prince but for God and his Countrey he deserves the reputation of a Learned and an Honest and a VVise man more and is of greater use in the world than your self For such a one is Learned without Letters you have Letters but no Learning That understand so many Languages turn over so many Volumes and yet are but a sheep when all is done CHAP. II. THE Argument that Salmasius toward the conclusion of his First Chapter urg'd as 〈◊〉 ble to wit that it was really so because all men unanimously agreed in it That very Argument than which as he appli'd it there is nothing more false I that am now about to discourse of the Right of Kings may turn upon himself with a great deal of truth For whereas he defines a King if that may be said to be defin'd which he makes infinite to be a Person in whom the Supream Power of the Kingdom resides who is answerable to God alone who may do whatsoever pleaseth him who is bound by no Law I will undertake to demonstrate not by mine but by his own Reasons and Authorities that there never was a Nation or People of any account for to ransack all the unciviliz'd Parts of the World were to no purpose that ever allow'd this to be their King 's Right or put such exorbitant Power into his hand as that he should not be bound by any Law that be might do what he would that he should judge all but be judged of 〈◊〉 Nor caâ—… my self that there ever was any one Person besides Salmasius of so slavish a Spirit as to assert the outragious Enormities of Tyrants to be the â—eights of Kings Those amongst us that were the greatest Royalists always abhorr'd this fordid Opinion and Salmasius himself as appears by some other Writings of his before he was brib'd was quite of another mind Insomuch that what he here gives out does not look like the Dictates of a free Subject under a free Government much less in so famous a Common-wealth as that of Holland and the most eminent University there but seems to have been penn'd by some despicable slave that lay rotting in a Prison or a Dungeon If whatever a King has a mind to do the Right of Kings will bear him out in which was a Lesson that the bloody Tyrant Antoninus Caracalla though his Step-mother Julia preach'd it to him and endeavour'd to iâ—ure him to the practice of it by making him commit incest with her self yet could hardly suck in Then there neither is nor ever was that King that deserv'd the name of a Tyrant They may safely violate all the Laws of God and Man their very being Kings keeps them innocent What Crime was ever any of them guilty of they did but make use of their own Right upon their own Vassals No King can commit such horrible Cruelties and Outrages as will not be within this Right of Kings So that there 's no Pretence left for any Complaints or Expostulations with any of them And dare you assert That this Right of Kings as you call it is grounded upon the Law of Nations or rather upon that of Nature you Brute Beast for you deserve not the name of a Man that are so cruel and unjust towards all those of your own kind that endeavour as much as in you lies so to bear down and villify the whole Race of Mankind that were made after the Image of God as to assert and maintain that those cruel and unmerciful Taskmasters that through the superstitious whimsies 〈◊〉 sloth or treachery of some persons get into the Chair are provided and appointed by nature her self that mild and gentle Mother of us all to be the Governours of those Nations they enslave By which Pestilent Doctrine of yours having rendred them more fierce and untractable you not only enable them to make havock of and trample under foot their miserable subjects but endeavour to arm them for that very purpose with the Law of Nature the Right of Kings and the very Constitutions of Government than which nothing can be more impious or ridiculous By my consent as Dionysius formerly of a Tyrant became a School-master so you of a Grammarian should become a Tyrant not that you may have that Regal License of doing other people harm but a fair opportunity of perishing miserably your self That as Tiberius complain'd when he had confin'd himself to the Island Capreae you may be reduced into such a condition as to be sensible that you perish daily But let us look a little more narrowly into this right of Kings that you talk of This was the sense of the Eastern and of the VVestern part of the world I shall not answer you with what Aristotle and Cicero who are both as credible Authors as any we have tell us viz. That the people of Asia easily submit to slavery but the Syrians and the Jews are even born to it from the womb I confess there are but few and those men of great wisdom and courage that are either desirous of Liberty or capable of using it The greatest part of the world chuse to live under Masters but yet they would have them just ones As for such as are unjust and tyrannical neither was God ever so much an enemy to Mankind as to enjoyn a necessity of submitting to them nor was there ever any people so destitute of all sense and sunk into such a depth of despair and to impose so cruel a Law upon themselves and their posterity First you produce the words of King Solomon in his Ecclesiastes And we are as willing to appeal to the Scripture as you As for Solomon's authority we 'l consider that hereafter when perhaps we shall be better able to understand it First let us hear God himself speak Deut. 17. 14. VVhen thou art come into the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee and shalt say I will set a King over me like as the Nations that are round about me Which passage I could wish all men would seriously consider for hence it appears by the testimony of God himself First that all Nations are at liberty to erect what form of Government they will amongst themselves and to change it when and into what they will This God affirms in express terms concerning the Hebrew Nation and it does not appear but that other Nations are as to this respect in the same condition Another remark that this place yields us is That a
that may save in all thy cities and thy judges of whom thou saidest give me a king and princes I gave thâ—â— a king in mine anger and took him 〈…〉 my wrath And Gidem that warlike Judg that was greater than a King I will not rule over you says he 〈…〉 shall my son rule over you the Lord shall rule over you Judges Chap the 8th Intimating thereby that it is not fit for a man but for God only to exercise Dominion over men And hence Josephus in his Book against Aâ—… an Egyptian Grammarian and a â—oulmouth'd fellow like you calls the Commonwealth of the Hebrews a Theocracy because the principality was in God only In Isaiah Chap. 26. v. 13. The people in their repentance complain that it had been mischievous to them that other Lords besides God himself had had Dominion over them All which places prove clearly that God gave the Israelites a King in his anger but now who can forbear laughing at the use you make of Abimelech's story Of whom it is said when he was kill'd partly by a woman that hurl'd a piece of a Mill-stone upon him and partly by his own Armour-Bearer that God rendred the wickedness of Abimelech This History say you proves strongly that God only is the Judge and Avenger of Kings Yea if this Argument holds he is the only Judge and Punisher of Tyrants Villanous Rascals and Bastards whoever can get into the Saddle whether by right or by wrong has thereby obtain'd a Soveraign Kingly right over the people is out of all danger of punishment all inferior Magistrates must lay down their Arms at his feet the people must not dare to mutter But what if some great notorious robber had perished in War as Abimelech did would any man infer from thence That God only is the Judge and Punisher of High-way men Or what if Abimelech had been condemn'd by the Law and died by an Executioner's hand would not God then have rendred his wickedness You never read that the Judges of the Children of Israel were ever proceeded against according to Law And yet you confess That where the Government is an Aristocracy the Prince if there be any may and ought to be call'd in question if he break the Laws This in your 47th Page And why may not a Tyrant as well be proceeded against in a Kingly Government Why because God rendred the wickedness of Abimelech So did the Women and so did his own Armour-bearer over both which he pretended to a right of Soveraignty And what if the Magistrates had rendred his wickedness Do not they bear the Sword for that very purpose for the punishment of Malefactors Having done with his powerful argument from the History of Abimelech's death he bâ—takes himself as his custom is to Slanders and Calumnies nothing but dirt and filth comes from him but for those things that he promis'd to make appear he hath not prov'd any one of them either from the Scriptures or from the Writings of the Rabbins He alledges no reason why Kings should be above all Laws and they only of all mortal men exempt from punishment if they deserve it He falls foul upon those very Authors and Authorities that he makes use of and by his own Discourse demonstrates the truth of the opinion that he argues against And perceiving that he is like to do but little good with his arguments he endeavours to bring an odium upon us by loading us with slanderous accusations as having put to death the most Vertuous innocent Prince that ever reign'd VVas King Solomon says he better than King Charles the First I confess some have ventur'd to compare his Father King James with Solomon nay to make King James the better Gentleman of the 〈◊〉 Solomon was David's Son David had been Sauâ—… â—…n but king James was the Son of the End of Darly who as â—uchanan tells us because Dâ—… the Musitian get into the Queen's Bed-Chamber at an unseasonable time kill'd him a little after he could not get to him then because he had Bolted the Door on the inside So that King James being the Son of an Earâ— was the better Gentleman and was frequently called a second Solomon though it is not very certain that himself was not the Son of David the Musitian too But how could it ever come into your head to make a comparison betwixt King Câ—ries and Solomon For that very King Charles whom you praise thus to the sky that very man's obâ—…acy and covetousness and cruelty his hard usage of all good and honest men the Wars that he rais'd the Spoilings and Plunderings and Conflagrations that he occasioned and the death of innumerable of his Subjects that he was the cause of does his Son Charles at this very time whilest I 'm a writing confess and bewail in the Stool of Repentance in Scotland and renounces there that Kingly right that you assert but since you delight in Parallels let 's compare King Charles and King Solomon together a little Solomon began his reign with the death of his Brother who had justly deserved it King Charles began his with his Father's Funeral I do not say with his Murder and yet all the marks and tokens of Poyson that may be appeared in his dead body but the suspition lighted upon the Duke of Buckingham only whom the 〈◊〉 notwithstanding cleared to the Parliament though he had killed the King and his Father and not only soâ— but he dissolved the Parliament lest the matter should be enquired into Solomon oppressed the people with heavy Taxes but he spent that â—…upon the Temple of God and in raising other publick Buildings King Charles spent his in Extravag 〈◊〉 Solomon was enticed to Idolatry by many Wives This man by one Solomon though he were seduced himself we read not that he seduced others but King Charles seduced and enticed others not only by large and ample rewards to corrupt the Church but by his Edicts and Ecclesiastical Constitutions he compelled them to set up Altars which all Protestants abhor and to bow down to Crucifixes painted over them on the Wall But yet for all this Solomon was not condemned to die Nor does it follow because he was not that therefore he ought not to have been Perhaps there were many Circumstances that made it then not expedient But not long after the people both by words and actions made appear what they took to be their right when Ten Tribes of Twelve revolted from his Son and if he had not saved himself by flight it is very likely they would have stoned him notwithstanding his Threats and big swelling words CHAP. III. HAving proved sufficiently that the Kings of the Jews were subject to the same Laws that the people were That there are no exceptions made in Scripture That 't is a most false assertion grounded upon no reason nor warranted by any Authority to say That Kings may do what they list with Impunity That God has exempted them
a degrading of our very Nature If one should consider attentively the Countenance of a Man and enquire after whose Image so noble a Creature were framed would not any one that heard him presently make answer That he was made after the Image of God himself Being therefore peculiarly God 's own and consequently things that are to be given to him we are intirely free by Nature and cannot without the greatest Sacrilege imaginable be reduced into a Condition of Slavery to any Man especially to a wicked unjust cruel Tyrant Our Saviour does not take upon him to determine what things are God's and what Caesar's he leaves that as he found it If the piece of Money which they shewed him was the same that was paid to God as in Vespatian's time it was then our Saviour is so far from having put an end to the Controversy that he has but entangl'd it and made it more perplext than it was before for 't is impossible the same thing should be given both to God and to Caesar But you say he intimates to them what things were Caesar's to wit that piece 〈◊〉 Money because it bore the Emperor's Stamp and what of all that How does this advantage your Cause You get not the Emperor or to your self a Penny by this Conclusion Either Christ allowed no-nothing at all to be Caesar's but that piece of Money that he then had in his hand and thereby asserted the Peoples Interest in every thing else or else if as you would have us understand him he affirms all Money that has the Emperor's stamp upon it to be the Emperor 's own He contradicts himself and gives the Magistrate a property in every Man's Estate when as he himself paid his Tribute-money with a Protestation that it was more than what either Peter or himself was bound to do The ground you rely on is very weak for Money bears the Prince's Image not as a token of its being his but of its being good Metal and that none may presume to Counterfeit it If the writing Princes Names or setting their Stamps upon a thing vest the property of it in them 't were a good ready way for them to invade all Property Or rather if whatever Subjects have be absolutely at their Prince's disposal which is your Assertion that piece of Money was not Caesar's because his Image was stampt on it but because of Right it belonged to him before 't was coyn'd So that nothing can be more manifest than that our Saviour in this place never intended to teach our Duty to Magistrates he would have spoke more plainly if he had but to reprehend the Malice and Wickedness of the hypocritical Pharisees When they told him that Herod laid wait to kill him did he return an humble submissive Answer Go tell that Fox says he c. intimating that Kings have no other Right to destroy their Subjects than Foxes have to devour the things they prey upon Say you He suffered Death under a Tyrant How could he possibly under any other But from hence you conclude that he asserted it to be the Right of Kings to commit Murder and act Injustice You 'd make an excellent Moralist But our Saviour tho he became a Servant not to make us so but that we might be free yet carried he himself so with Relation to the Magistracy as not to ascribe any more to them then their due Now let us come at last to enquire what his Doctrine was upon this Subject The Sons of Zâ—bedee were ambitious of Honour and Power in the Kingdom of Christ which they persuaded themselves he would shortly set up in the World he reproves them so as withal to let all Christians know what Form of Civil Government he desires they should settle amongst themselves Ye know says he that the Princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them and they that are great exercise authority upon them but it shall not be so among you but whosover will be great among you let him be your Minister and whosoever will be chief among you let him be your servant Unless you 'd been distracted you could never have imagined that this place makes for you and yet you urge it and think it furnishes you with an Argument to prove that our Kings are absolute Lords and Masters over us and ours May it be our fortune to have to do with such Enemies in War as will fall blind-fold and naked into our Camp instead of their own as you constantly do who alledge that for your self that of all things in the World makes most against you The Israelites asked God for a King such a King as other Nations round about them had God dissuaded them by many Arguments which our Saviour here gives us an Epitomy of You know that the Princes of the Gentiles exercise Dominion over them But yet because the Israelites persisted in their desire of a King God gave them one tho in his Wrath. Our Saviour lest Christians should desire a King such a one at least as might Rule as he says the Princes of the Gentiles did prevents them with an Injunction to the contrary but it shall not be so among you What can be said plainer than this That stately imperious Sway and Dominion that Kings use to exercise shall not be amongst you what specious Titles soever they may assume to themselves as that of Benefactors or the like But he that will be great amongst you and who is greater than the Prince let him be your Servant So that the Lawyer whoever he be that you are so smart upon was not so much out of the way but had our Saviour's own Authority to back him when he said that Christian Princes were indeed no other than the Peoples Servants 't is very certain that all good Magistrates are so Insomuch that Christians either must have no King at all or if they have that King must be the People's Servant Absolute Lordship and Christianity are inconsistent Moses himself by whose Ministry that seviler Oeconomy of the old Law was instituted did not exercise an Arbitrary Haughty Power and Authority but bore the burden of the People and carried them in his Bosom as a Nursing Father does a sucking Child Numb 11. and what is that of a Nursing Father but a Ministerial Imployment Plato would not have the Magistrates called Lords but Servants and Helpers of the People nor the People Servants but Maintainers of their Magistrates because they give Meat Drink and Wages to their Kings themselves Aristotle calls the Magistrates Keepers and Ministers of the Laws Plato Ministers and servants The Apostle calls them Ministers of God but they are Ministers and Servants of the People and of the Laws nevertheless for all that the Laws and the Magistrates were both created for the good of the People And yet this is it that you call the Opinion of the Fanatick-Mastiffs in England I should not have thought the People of England were Mastiff dogs
even against Kings themselves if they act contrary to Law Aristotle likewise in the third Book of his Politicks Of all Kingdoms says he that are govern'd by Laws that of the Lacedemonians seems to be most truly and properly so And he says all forms of Kingly Governments are according to setled and establisht Laws but one which he calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Absolute Monarchy which he does not mention ever to have obtain'd in any Nation So that Aristotle thought such a Kingdom as that of the Lacedemonians was to be and deserve the name of a Kingdom more properly than any other and consequently that a King tho subordinate to his own people was nevertheless actually a King properly so called Now since so many and so great Authors assert that a Kingly Government both in name and thing may very well subsist even where the people tho they do not ordinarily exercise the Suâ—… Power yet have it actually residing in them and exercise it upon occasion Be not you of so mean a soul as to fear the down-fall of Grammer and the 〈◊〉 of the signification of words to that deâ—… as to betray the Liberty of Mankind and the State rather than your Glossary should not hold water And know for the future that words must be conformable to things not things to words By this means you 'l have more wit and not run on in infinitum which now you 're afraid of It was to no purpose then for Seneca you say to describe those three forms of Government as he has done Let Seneca do a thing to no purpose so we enjoy our Liberty And if I mistake us not we are other sort of men than to be enslav'd by Seneca's flowers And yet Seneca though he says that the Soveraign Power in a Kingly Government resides in a single person says withal that the power is the people's and by them committed to the King for the welfare of the whole not for their ruin and destruction and that the people has not given him a propriety in it but the use of it Kings at this rate you say do not reign by God but by the people As if God did not so over-rule the people that they set up such Kings as it pleases God Since Justinian himself openly acknowledgeth that the Roman Emperours derived their Authority from that Royal Law whereby the people granted to them and vested in them all their own power and authority But how oft shall we repeat these things over and over again Then you take upon you to intermeddle with the Constitution of our Government in which you are no ways concerned who are both a stranger and a foreigner but it shows your sawciness and want of good manners Come then let us hear your Soloecisms like a busie Coxcomb as you are You tell us but 't is in false Latin that what those Desperadoes say is only to deceive the people You Rascal was it for this that you a Renegado Grammarian were so forward to intermeddle with the affairs of our Government that you might introduce your Soloecisms and Barbarisms amongst us But say how have we deceiv'd the people The form of Government which they have set up is not Popular but Military This is what that herd of Fugitives and Vagabonds hired you to write So that I shall not trouble my self to answer you who bleat what you know nothing of but I 'le answer them that hired you Who excluded the Lords from Parliament was it the people Yea it was the people and in so doing they threw an intollerable yoke of Slavery from off their necks Those very Soldiers who you say did it were not foreigners but our own Country-men and a great part of the people and they did it with the consent and at the desire of almost all the rest of the people and not without the authority of the Parliament neither Was it the people that cut off part of the House of Commons forcing some away c. Yes I say it was the people For whatever the better and sounder part of the Senate did in which the true power of the people resided why may not the people be said to have done it What if the greater part of the Senate should chuse to be slaves or to expose the Government to sale ought not the lesser number to interpose and endeavour to retain their Liberty if it be in their power But the Officers of the Army and their Soldiers did it And we are beholden to those Officers for not being wanting to the State but repelling the Tumultary violence of the Citizens and Mechanicks of London who like that Rabble that appear'd for Clodius had but a little before beset the very Parliament House Do you therefore call the right of the Parliament to whom it properly and originally belongs to take care of the Liberty of the people both in Peace and War a Military power But 't is no wonder that those Traytors that have dictated these passages to you should talk at that rate so that profligate faction of Anthony and his adherents used to call the Senate of Rome when they armed themselves against the enemies of their Country The Camp of Pompey And now I 'm glad to understand that they of your party envy Cromwell that most valiant General of our Army his undertaking that Expedition in Ireland so acceptable to Almighty God surrounded with a joyful crowd of his Friends and prosecuted with the well-wishes of the people and the prayers of all good men For I question not but at the news of his many Victories there they are by this time bursten with spleen I pass by many of your impertinencies concerning the Roman Soldiers What follows is most notoriously false The power of the people say you ceases where there is a King By what Law or Right is that Since it is known that almost all Kings of what Nations soever received their Authority from the people upon certain conditions which if the King do not perform I wish you would inform us why that Power which was but a Trust should not return to the people as well from a King as from a Consul or any other Magistrate For when you tell us that 't is necessary for the Publick Safety you do but trifle with us for the safety of the Publick is equally concerned whether it be from a King or from a Senate or from a Triumvirate that the power wherewith they were entrusted revert to the people upon their abuse of it and yet you your self grant that it may so revert from all sorts of Magistrates a King only excepted Certainly if no people in their right wits ever committed the Government either to a King or other Magistrates for any other purpose than for the common good of them all there can be no reason why to prevent the utter ruin of them all they may not as well take it back again from a King as from other Governors nay
wherever the Laws are set at naught the same dictate of nature must necessarily prompt us to betake our selves to Force again To be of this opinion says Cicero pro Sestio is a sign of Wisdom to put it in practice argues Courage and Resolution to do both is the effect of Vertue in its perfection Let this stand then as a setled Maxim of the Law of Nature never to be shaken by any Artifices of Flatterers That the Senate or the people are superior to Kings be they good or bad Which is but what you your self do in effect confess when you tell us That the Authority of Kings was derived from the people For that power which they transferred to Princes doth yet naturally or as I may say virtually reside in themselves notwithstanding for so natural causes that produce any effect by a certain eminency of operation do always retain more of their own vertue and energy than they impart nor do they by communicating to others exhaust themselves You see the closer we keep to Nature the more evidently does the peoples power appear to be above that of the Prince And this is likewise certain That the people do not freely and of choice settle the Government in their King absolutely so as to give him a Propriety in it nor by Nature can do so but only for the Publick Safety and Liberty which when the King ceaseth to take care of then the people in effect have given him nothing at all For Nature says the people gave it him to a particular end and purpose which end if neither Nature nor the People can attain the peoples Gift becomes no more valid than any other void Covenant or Agreement These Reasons prove very fully That the People are Superior to the King and so your greatest and most 〈◊〉 Argument That a King cannot be judged by his 〈◊〉 because he has no Peer in his Kingdom nor any Superior falls to the ground For you take that for granted which we by no means allow In a popular State say you the Magistrates being appointed by the people may likewise be punished for their Crimes by the people In an Aâ—…cracy the Senators may be punished by their Collegues But 't is a 〈◊〉 thing to proceed criminally against a King in his own Kingdom and make him plead for his life What can you conclude from hence but that they who set up Kings over them are the most miserable and most silly people in the world But I paay what 's the reason why the people may not punish a King that becomes a Malefactor as well as they may popular Magistrates and Senators in an Aristocracy Do you think that all they that live under a Kingly Government were so strangely in love with Slavery as when they might be free to chuse Vassalage and to put themselves all and entirely under the dominion of one man who often happens to be an ill man and often a fool so as whatever cause might be to leave themselves no 〈◊〉 in no relief from the Laws nor the dictates of Nature against the Tyranny of a most outragious Master when such a one happens Why do they then tender conditions to their Kings when they first enter upon their Government and prescribe Laws for them to govern by Do they do this to be trampled upon the more and be the more laughed to scorn Can it â—e imagined that a whole people would ever so 〈◊〉 themselves depart from their own interest to that degree be so wanting to themselves as to place all their hopes in one man and he very often the most vain person of them all To what end do they require an Oath of their Kings Not to act any 〈◊〉 contrary to Law We must suppose them to do this that poor creatures they may learn to their â—…rrow That Kings only may commit Perjury with impunity This is what your own wicked Conclusions hold forth If a King that is elected promise any thing to his people upon Oath which if he would not have swâ—rn to perhaps they would not have chose him yet if he refuse to perform that promise he falls not under the peoples censure Nay tho he swear to his Subjects at his Election That he will administer Justice to them according to the Laws of the Kingdom and that if he do not they shall be discharged of their Allegiance and himself ipso facto cease to be their King yet if he break this oath 't is God and not man that must require it of him I have transcribed these lines not for their Elegance for they are barbarously expressed nor because I think there needs any answer to them for they answer themselves they explode and damn themselves by their notorious falshood and loathsomness but I did it to recommend you to Kings for your great Merits that among so many places as there are at Court they may put you into some Preferment or Office that may be fit for you some are Princes Secretaries some their Cup-bearers some Masters of the Revels I think you had best be Master of the Perjuries to some of them You sha'nt be Master of the Ceremonies you are too much a Clown for that but their Treachery and Perfidiousness shall be under your care But that men may see that you are both a Fool and a Knave to the highest degree let us consider these last assertions of yours a little more narrowly A King say you tho he swear to his Subjects at his Election that he will govern according to Law and that if he do not they shall be discharged of their Allegiance and he himself ipso facto cease to be their King yet can he not be deposed or punished by them Why not a King I pray as well as popular Magistrates Because in a popular State the People do not transfer all their Power to the Magistrates And do they in the Case that you have put vest it all in the King when they place him in the Government upon those terms expresly to hold it no longer than he useth it well So that it is evident that a King sworn to observe the Laws if he transgress them may be punished and deposed as well as popular Magistrates So that you can make no more use of that invincible Argument of the Peoples tranferring all their Right and Power into the Prince you your self have battered it down with your own Engines Hear now another most powerful and invincible Argument of his why Subjects cannot judge their Kings because he is bound by no Law being himself the sole Lawgiver Which having been proved already to be most false this great reason comes to nothing as well as the former But the reason why Princes have but seldom been proceeded against for personal and private Crimes as Whoredom and Adultery and the like is not because they could not justly be punished even for such but lest the People should receive more prejudice through disturbances that
said in our Law to be an Infant and to possess his Rights and Dignities as a Child or a Ward does his See the Mirror cap. 4. Sect. 22. And hence is that common saying amongst us That the King can do no wrong Which you like a Raseal interpret thus Whatever the King does is no Injury because be is not â—…ble to be punished for it By this very Comment if there were nothing else the wonderful Impudence and Villany of this fellow discovers it self sufficiantly It belongs to the Hâ—ad you say to command and 〈◊〉 to the Members The King is the Head of the Parliament You would not trifle thus if you had any guts in your brains You are mistaken again but there 's no end of your mistakes in not distinguishing the King's Counsellors from the States of the Realm For neither ought he to make choice of all of them nor of any of these which the râ—st do not approve of but for electing any Member of the House of Commons he never so much as pretended to it Whom the people appointed to that Service they were severally chosen by the Votes of all the people in their respective Cities Towns and Counties I speak now of things universally known and therefore I am the shorter But you say 'T is â—alâ—e that the Parliament was instituted by the people as the Worshippers of Saint Independency assert Now I see why you took so much pains in endeavourâ—â—g to subvert the Paâ—â—cy you carry another Pope in your belly as we say For what else should you be in labour of the Wiâ—e of a Woman a He-Wolf impregnated by a She-Wolf but either a Monster or some new sort of Pâ—…cy You now make He-Saints and She-Saints at your pleasure as if you were a true genuine Pope You absolve Kings of all their sins and as if you had utterly vanquish'd and subdu'd your Antagonist the Pope you adorn your self with his spoils But because you have not yet profligated the Pope quite till the Second and Third and perhaps the Fourth and Fifth Part of your Book of his Supremacy come out which Book will nauseate a great many Readers to death sooner than you 'll get the better of the Pope by it let it suffice you in the mean time 〈◊〉 you to become some Antipope or other There 's another She-Saint besides that Independency that you deâ—ide which you have Canonized in good earnest and that is the Tyranny of Kings You shall therefore by my consent be the High Priest of Tyranny and that you may have all the Pope's Titles you shall be a Servant of the Servants not of God but of the Court. For that Curse pronounced upon Canaan seems to stick as close to you as your Shirt You call the People a Beast What are you then your self For neither can that Sacred Confistory nor your Lordship of St. Lou exempt you its Master from being one of the People nay of the Common People nor can make you other than what you really are a most loathsome Beast Indeed the Writings of the Prophets shadow out to us the Monarchy and Dominion of Great Kings by the Name and under the Resemblance of a Great Beast You say That there is no mention of Parliaments held under our Kings that reigned before William the Conqueror It is not worth while to Jangle about a French word The thing was always in being and you your self allow that in the Saxon times Concilia Sapientum Wittena-gemots are mentioned And there are wise Men among the Body of the People as well as amongst the Nobility But in the Statute of Merton made in the twentieth year of King Henry the 3d the Earls and Barons are only named Thus you are always imposed upon by words who yet have spent your whole Life in nothing else but words for we know very well that in that age not only the Guardians of the Cinque-Ports and Magistrates of Cities but even Tradesmen are sometimes called Barons and without doubt they might much more reasonably call every Member of Parliament tho never so much a Commoner by the Name of a Baron For that in the fifty second Year of the same King's Reign the Commoners as well as the Lords were summoned the Statute of Marlbridge and most other Statutes declare in express words which Commoners King Edward the Third in the Preface to the Statute-Staple calls Magnates Comitatum The Great Men of the Counties as you very learnedly quote it for me those to wit That came out of the several Counties and served for them which number of Men constituted the House of Commons and neither were Lords nor could be Besides a Book more Ancient than those Statutes called Modus habendi Parliamenta i. e. The manner of holding Parliaments tells us That the King and the Commons may hold a Parliament and enact Laws tho the Lords the Bishops are absent but that with the Lords and the Bishops in the Absence of the Commons no Parliament can be held And there 's a reason given for it viz. because Kings held Parliaments and Councils with their People before any Lords or Bishops were made besides the Lords serve for themselves only the Commons each for the County City or Burrough that sent them And that therefore the Commons in Parliament represent the whole Body of the Nation in which respect they are more worthy and every way preferable to the House of Peers But the power of Judicature you say never was invested in the House of Commons Nor was the King ever possessed of it Remember tho that originally all Power proceeded and yet does proceed from the People Which Marcus Tullius excellently well shows in his Oration De lege Agraria Of the Agrarian Law As all Powers Authorities and publick Administrations ought to be derived from the whole Body of the People so those of them ought in an especial manner so to be derived which are ordained and appointed for the Common Benefit and Interest of all to which Impolyments every particular Person may both give his Vote for the chusing such Persons as he thinks will take most care of the Publick and withal by voting and making Interest for them lay such Obligations upon them as may entitle them to their Friendship and good Offices in time to come Here you see the true rise and original of Parliaments and that it was much ancienter than the Saxon Chronicles Whilst we may dwell in such a light of Truth and Wisdom as Cicero's Age afforded you labour in vain to blind us with the darkness of obseurer times By the saying whereof I would not be understood to derogate in the least from the Authority and Prudenâ—e of our Ancestors who most certainly went further in the enacting of good Laws than either the Ages they lived in or their own Learning or Education seem to have been capable of and tho sometimes they made Laws that were none of the best yet as being conscious to
out of The King you say is supposed not capable of committing any crime because no punishment is consequential upon any crime of his Whoever therefore is not punisht offends not it is not the theft but the punishment that makes the thief Salmasius the Grammarian commits no Soloecisms now because he is from under the Ferular when you have overthrown the Pope let these for God's sake be the Canons of your Pontificate or at least your Indulgences whether you shall chuse to be called the High Priest St. â—yranny or of St. Slavery I pass by the Reproachful language which towards the latter end of the Chapter you give the State of the Commonwealth and the Church of England 't is common to such as you are you contemptible Varlet to rail at those things most that are most praise-worthy But that I may not seem to have asserted any thing rashly concerning the Right of the Kings of England or rather concerning the Peoples Right with respect to their Princes I will now alledg out of our ancient Histories a few things indeed of many but such as will make it evident that the English lately tried their King according to the setled Laws of the Realm and the Customs of their Ancestors After the Romans quitted this Island the Britains for about forty years were sui Juris and without any Kings at all Of whom those they first set up some they put to death And for that Gildas reprehends them not as you do for killing their Kings but for killing them uncondemned and to use his own words Non pro veri examinatione without inquiring into the matter of fact Vortigerne was for his Incestuous Marriage with his own Daughter condemn'd as Nennius informs us the most ancient of all our Historians next to Gildas by St. German and a General Council of the Britains and his Son Vortimer set up in his stead This came to pass not long after St. Augustine's death which is enough to discover how â—utilous you are to say as you have done that it was a Pope and Zachary by name who first held the lawfulness of judging Kings About the year of our Lord 600 Morcantius who then Reign'd in Wales was by Oudeceus Bishop of Landaff condemn'd to Exile for the Murther of his Uncle though he got the Sentence off by bestowing some Lands upon the Church Come we now to the Saxons whose Laws we have and therefore I shall quote none of their Presidents Remember that the Saxons were of a German Extract who neither invested their Kings with any absolute unlimited power and consulted in a Body of the more weighty affairs of Government whence we may perceive that in the time of our Saxon Ancestors Parliaments the name it self only excepted had the Supreme Authority The name they gave them was Councils of Wise-men and this in the Reign of Ethelbert of whom Bede says That he made Laws in imitation of the Roman Laws cum concilio sapientum by the advice or in a Council of his Wise-men So Edwyn King of Northumberland and Ina King of the VVest-Saxons having consulted with their VVise-men and the Elders of the people made new Laws Other Laws K. Alfred made by the advice in like manner of his Wise-men and he says himself That it was by the consent of them all that they were commanded to be observed From these and many other like places it is as clear as the Sun that chosen Men even from amongst the Common People were Members of the Supreme Councils unless we must believe that no Men are wise but the Nobility We have likewise a very Ancient Book called the Mirror of Justices in which we are told That the Saxons when they first subdued the Brittains and chose themselves Kings required an Oath of them to submit to the Judgment of the Law as much as any of their Subjects Cap. 1. Sect. 2. In the same place 't is said that it is but just that the King have his Peers in Parliament to take Cognizance of wrongs done by the King or the Queen and that there was a Law made in King Alored's time that Parliaments should be holden twice a year at London or oftner if need were Which Law when through neglect it grew into disuse was revived by two Statutes in King Edward the Third's time And in another ancient Manuscript called Modus tenendi Parliamenta we read thus If the King dissolve the Parliament before they have dispatcht the business for which the Council was summon'd he is guilty of Perjury and shall be reputed to have broken his Coronation Oath For how can he be said to grant those good Laws which the people chuse as he is sworn to do if he hinders the People from chusing them either by summoning Parliaments seldomer or by dissolving them sooner than the Publick Affairs require or admit And that Oath which the Kings of England take at their Coronation has always been looked upon by our Lawyers as a most sacred Law And what remedy can be found to obviate the great Dangers of the whole State which is the very end of summoning Parliaments if that Great and August Assembly may be dissolved at the pleasure many times of a silly head-strong King To absent himself from them is certainly less than to dissolve them and yet by our Laws as that Modus lays them down the King neither can nor ought to absent himself from his Parliament unless he be really indisposed in Health nor then neither till twelve of the Peers have been with him to inspect his Body and give the Parliament an account of his Indisposition Is this like the Carriage of Servants to a Master On the other hand the House of Commons without whom there can be no Parliament held tho summoned by the King may withdraw and having made a Secession expostulate with the King concerning Male-administration as the same Book has it But which is the greatest thing of all amongst the Laws of King Edward commonly called the Confessor there is one very excellent relating to the Kingly Office which Office if the King do not discharge as he ought Then says the Law He shall not retain so much as the Name of a King And lest these words should not be sufficiently understood the Example of Chilperic King of France is subjoyn'd whom the People for that Cause deposed And that by this Law a wicked King is liable to Punishment that Sword of King Edward called Curtana denotes to us which the Earl of Chester used to carry in the Solemn Procession at a Coronation A token says Mathew Paris that he has Authority by Law to punish the King if he will not do his Duty and the Sword is hardly ever made use of but in Capital Punishments This same Law together with other Laws of that good King Edward did William the Conqueror ratifie in the Fourth Year of his Reign and in a very full Council held at Verulam confirm'd it with a
most solemn Oath And by so doing he not only extinguish'd his Right of Conquest if he ever had any over us but subjected himself to be judged according to the Tenor of this very Law And his Son Henry swore to the observance of King Edward's Laws and of this amongst the rest and upon these only terms it was that he was chosen King whilst his Elder Brother Robert was alive The same Oath was taken by all succeeding Kings before they were Crowned Hence our Ancient and Famous Lawyer Bracton in his first Book Chap. 8. There is no King in the case says he where Will rules 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and Law does not take place And in his Third Book Chap. 9. A King is a King so long as he Rules well he becomes a Tyrant when he oppresses the People committed to his Charge And in the same Chapter The King ought to use the Power of Law and Right as God's Minister and Vice-gerent the Power of wrong is the Devils and not Gods when the King turns aside to do Injustice he is the Minister of the Devil The very same words almost another Ancient Lawyer has who was the Author of the Book called Fleta both of them remembred that truly Royal Law of King Edward that Fundamental Maxim in our Law which I have formerly mentioned by which nothing is to be accounted a Law that is contrary to the Laws of God or of Reason no more than a Tyrant can be said to be a King or a Minister of the Devil a Minister of God Since therefore the Law is chiefly right Reason if we are bound to obey a King and a Minister of God by the very same Reason and the very same Law we ought to resist a Tyrant and a Minister of the Devil And because Controversies arise oftner about Names than Things the same Authors tell us that a King of England tho he have not lost the Name of a King yet is as liable to be judged and ought so to be as any of the Common People Bracton Book 1. Chap. 8. Fleta Book 1. Chap. 17. No Man ought to be greater than the King in the Administration of Justice but he himself ought to be as little as the least in receiving Justice si peccat if he offend Others read it si petat Since our Kings therefore are liable to be judged whether by the Name of Tyrants or of Kings it must not be difficult to assign their Legal Judges Nor will it be amiss to consult the same Authors upon that point Bracton Book 1. Chap. 16. Fleta Book 1. Chap. 17. The King has his Superiors in the Government The Law by which he is made King and his Court to wit the Earls and the Barons Comites Earls are as much as to say Companions and he that has a Companion has a Master and therefore if the King will be without a Bridle that is not govern by Law they ought to bridle him That the Commons are comprehended in the word Barons has been shown already nay and in the Books of our Ancient Laws they are frequently said to have been called Peers of Parliament and especially in the Modus tenendi c. There shall be chosen says that Book out of all the Peers of the Realm Five and twenty Persons of whom five shall be Knight five Citizens and five Burgâ—ssâ—s and two Knights of a County have a greater Vote in granting and rejecting than the greatest Earl in England And it is but reasonable they should for they Vote for a whole County c. the Earls for themselves only And who can but perceive that those Patent Earls whom you call Earls made by Writ since we have now none that hold their Earldoms by Tenure are very unfit Persons to try the King who conferr'd their Honours upon them Since therefore by our Law as appears by that old Book call'd The Mirror the King has his Peers who in Parliament have Cognizance of wrongs done by the King to any of his People and since it is notoriously known that the meanest Man in the Kingdom may even in inferior Courts have the benefit of the Law against the King himself in Case of any Injury or Wrong sustained how much more Consonant to Justice how much more necessary is it that in case the King oppress all his People there should be such as have Authority not only to restrain him and keep him within Bounds but to Judge and Punish him For that Government must needs be very ill and most ridiculously constituted in which remedy is provided in case of little Injuries done by the Prince to private Persons and no Remedy no Redress for greater no care taken for the safety of the whole no Provision made to the contrary but that the King may without any Law ruin all his Subjects when at the same time he cannot by Law so much as hurt any one of them And since I have shown that it is neither good manners nor expedient that the Lords should be the Kings Judges it follows that the Power of Judicature in that case does wholly and by very good Right belong to the Commons who are both Peers of the Realm and Barons and have the Power and Authority of all the People committed to them For since as we find it expresly in our written Law which I have already cited the Commons together with the King make a good Parliament without either Lords or Bishops because before either Lords or Bishops had a being Kings held Parliaments with their Commons only by the very same reason the Commons apart must have the Sovereign Power without the King and a Power of Judging the King himself because before there ever was a King they in the Name of the whole Body of the Nation held Councils and Parliaments had the Power of Judicature made Laws and made the Kings themselves not to Lord it over the People but to Administer their publick Affairs Whom if the King instead of so doing shall endeavour to injure and oppress our Law pronounces him from time forward not so much as to retain the Name of a King to be no such thing as a King and if he be no King what need we trouble our selves to find out Peers for him For being then by all good Men adjudged to be a Tyrant there are none but who are Peers good enough for him and proper enough to pronounce Sentence of Death upon him judicially These things being so I think I have sufficiently proved what I undertook by many Authorities and written Laws to wit that since the Commons have Authority by very good Right to try the King and since they have actually tried him and put him to Death for the mischief he had done both in Church and State and without all hope of amendment they have done nothing therein but what was just and regular for the Interest of the State in discharging of their Trust becoming their Dignity and according to the Laws of
the Land And I cannot upon this occasion but congratulate my self with the Honour of having had such Ancestors who founded this Government with no less prudence and in as much Liberty as the most worthy of the Ancient Romans or Grecians ever sounded any of theirs and they must needs if they have any knowledg of our Affairs rejoyce over their Posterity who when they were almost reduced to Slavery yet with so much Wisdom and Courage 〈◊〉 and asserted the State which they so wisely sounded upon so much Liberty from the unruly Government of a King CHAP. IX I Think by this time 't is sufficiently evident that Kings of England may be judged even by the Laws of England and that they have their proper Judges which was the thing to be proved What do you do farther for whereas you repeat many things that you have said before I do not intend to repeat the answers that I have given them 'T is an easie thing to demonstrate even from the nature of the things for which Parliaments are summon'd that the King is above the Parliament The Parliament you say is wont to be assembled upon weighty affairs such as wherein the safety of the Kingdom and of the people is concerned If therefore the King call Parliaments together not for his own concerns but those of the Nation nor to settle those neither but by their own consent at their own discretion what is he more than a Minister and as it were an agent for the people since without their Suffrages that are chosen by the people he cannot Eâ—… the least thing whatsoever either with relation to himself or any body else Which proves likewise that 't is the King's duty to call Parliaments whenever the people desire it since the peoples and not the King 's concerns are to be treated of that Assembly and to be ordered as they see cause For although the King's assent be required for fashion sake which in lesser matters that concerned the welfare of private persons only he might refuse and use that form the King will advise yet in those greater affairs that concern'd the publick safety and liberty of the people in general he had no Negative voice for it would have been against his Coronation Oath to deny his assent in such cases which was as binding to him as any Law could be and against the chief article of Magna Charta Cap. 29. We will not deny to any man nor will we delay to render to every man Right and Justice Shall it not be in the King's power to deny Justice and shall it be in his power to deny the Enacting of Just Laws Could he not deny Justice to any particular person and could he to all his people Could he not do it in inferior Courts and could he in the Supreme Court of all Or can any King be so arrogant as to pretend to know what 's just and profitable better than the whole body of the people Especially since he is created and chosen for this very end and purpose to do Justice to all as Braction says Lib. 3. Cap. 9. that is to do Justice according to such Laws as the people agree upon Hence is what we find in our Records 7 H 4. Rott Parl. num 59. The King has no Prerogative that derogates from Justice and Equity And formerly when Kings have refused to confirm Acts of Parliament to wit Magna Charta and some others our Ancestors have brought them to it by force of Arms. And yet our Lawyers never were of opinion that those Laws were less valid or less binding since the King was forced to assent to no more than what he ought in Justice to have assented to voluntarily and without constraint Whilest you go about to prove that Kings of other Nations have been as much under the power of their Senates or Counsels as our Kings were you do not argue us into Slavery but them into Liberty In which you do but that over again that you have from the very beginning of your Discourse and which some silly Leguleians now and then do to argue unawares against their own Clients But you say VVe confess that the King where-ever he be yet is supposed still to be present in his Parliament by vertue of his power insomuch that whatever is transacted there is supposed to be done by the King himself and then as if you had got some petty bribe or small morsel and tickled with the remembrance of your Purse of Gold We take say you what they give us and take a Halter then for I 'm sure you deserve it But we do not give it for granted which is the thing you thought would follow from thence That therefore that Court acts only by vertue of a Delegated Power from the King For when we say that the Regal Power be it what it will cannot be absent from the Parliament do we thereby acknowledg that Power to be Supreme does not the King's Authority seem rather to be transferred to the Parliament and as being the lesser of the two to be comprised in the greater Certainly if the Parliament may resâ—ind the King's Acts whether he will or no and revoke Priviledges granted by him to whomsoever they be granted If they may set bounds to his Prerogative as they see cause if they may regulate his yearly Revenue and the Expences of his Court his Retinue and generally all the concerns of his Houshold If they may remove his most intimate Friends and Counsellors and as it were pluck them out of his bosom and bring them to condign punishment Finally if any Subject may by Law appeal from the King to the Parliament all which things that they may lawfully be done and have been frequently practised both our Histories and Records and the most eminent of our Lawyers assure us I suppose no man in his right wits will deny the Authority of the Parliament to be superiour to that of the King For even in an Interregnum the Authority of the Parliament is in being and than which nothing is more common in our Histories they have often made a free Choice of a Successor without any regard to an Hereditary descent In short the Parliament is the Supreme Councel of the Nation constituted and appointed by a most free people and armed with ample power and authority for this end and purpose viz. to consult together upon the most weighty affairs of the Kingdom the King was created to put their Laws in execution Which thing after the Parliament themselves had declared in a publick Edict for such is the Justice of their Proceedings that of their own accord they have been willing to give an account of their actions to other Nations is it not prodigious that such a pitiful fellow as you are a man of no authority of no credit of no estate in the world a meer Burgundian 〈◊〉 should have the imprudence to accuse the Parliament of England asserting by a publick Instrument their
own and their Countries Right of a detestable and â—â—rrid Imposture Your Country may be aâ—…amed you Rascall to have brought forth a little inconsiderable fellow of such profligate impudence But perhaps you have somewhat to tell us that may be for our good Go on we 'l hear you VVhat Laws say you can a Parliament Enact in which the Bishops are 〈◊〉 present Did you then ye madman expell the Order of Bishops out of the Church to introduce them into the State O wicked wretch who ought to be delivered over to Satan whom the Church ought to forbid her Communion as being a Hypocrite and an Atheist and no Civil Society of men to acknowledg as a member being a publick enemy and a Plague-sore to the common liberty of Mankind who where the Gospel fails you endeavour to prove out of Aristetle Halicarnassaeus and then from some Popish Authorities of the most corrupt ages that the King of England is the head of the Church of England to the end that you may as far as in you lies bring in the Bishops again his Intimates and Table-Companions grown so of late to rob and Tyrannize in the Church of God whom God himself hath deposed and degraded whose very Order you had heretofore asserted in Print that it ought to be rooted out of the world as destructive of and pernicious to the Christian Religion What Apostate did ever so shamefully and wickedly desert as this man has done I do not say his own which indeed never was any but the Christian Doctrine which he had formerly asserted The Bishops being put down who under the King and by his permission held Plea of Ecclesiastical Causes upon whom say you will that Jurisdiction devolve O Villain have some regard at least to your own Conscience Remember before it be too late if at least this admonition of mine come not too late remember that this mocking the Holy Spirit of God is an inexpiable crime and will not be left unpunisht Stop at last and set bounds to your fury lest the wrath of God lay hold upon you suddenly for endeavouring to deliver the flock of God his Anointed ones that are not to be touched to Enemies and cruel Tyrants to be crusht and trampled on again from whom himself by a high and stretched out arm had so lately delivered them and from whom you your self maintained that they ought to be delivered I know not whether for any good of theirs or in order to the hardning of your own heart and to further your own damnation If the Bishops have no right to Lord it over the Church certainly much less have Kings whatever the Laws of men may be to the contrary For they that know any thing of the Gospel know thus much that the Government of the Church is altogether Divine and Spiritual and no Civil Constitution Whereas you say That in Secular Affairs the Kings of England have always had the Sovereign Power Our Laws do abundantly declare that to be false Our Courts of Justice are erected and suppressed not by the King's Authority but that of the Parliament and yet in any of them the meanest Subject might go to Law with the Ring nor is it a rare thing for the Judges to give Judgment against him which if the King should endeavour to obstruct by any Prohibition Mandate or Letters the Judges were bound by Law and by their Oaths not to obey him but to reject such Inhibitions as null and void in Law the King could not imprison any man or seize his Estate as forfeited he could not punish any man not summoned to appear in Court where not the King but the ordinary Judges gave Sentence which they frequently did as I have said against the King Hence our Bractan lib. 3. cap. 9. The Regal Power says he is according to Law he has no power to do any wrong nor can the King do any thing but what the Law warrants Those Lawyers that you have consulted men that have lately fled their Countrey may tell you another tale and acquaint you with some Statutes not very Ancient neither but made in King Edward 4th's King Henry 6th's and King Edward 6th's days but they did not consider That what power soever those Statutes gave the King was conferred upon him by Authority of Parliament so that he was beholding to them for it and the same power that conferr'd it might at pleasure resume it How comes it to pass that so acute a disputant as you should suffer your self to be imposed upon to that degree as to make use of that very Argument to prove the King's Power to be Absolute and Supreme than which nothing proves more clearly That it is subordinate to that of the Parliament Our Records of the greatest Authority with us declare That our Kings owe all their Power not to any Right of Inheritance of Conquest or Succession but to the people So in the Parliament Rolls of King Hen. 4. numb 108. we read That the Kingly Office and Power was granted by the Commons to King Henry the 4th and before him to his Predecessor King Richard the 2d just as Kings use to grant Commissioners places and Lieutenantships to their Deputies by Edicts and Patents Thus the House of Commons ordered expresly to be entred upon record That they had granted to King Richard to use the same good Liberty that the Kings of England before him had used Which because that King abused to the subversion of the Laws and contrary to his Oath at his Coronation the same persons that granted him that power took it back again and deposed him The same men as appears by the same Record declared in open Parliament That having confidence in the Prudence and Moderation of King Henry the 4th they will and enact That he enjoy the same Royal Authority that his Ancestors enjoyed Which if it had been any other than in the nature of a Trust as this was either those Houses of Parliament were foolish and vain to give what was none of their own or those Kings that were willing to receive as from them what was already theirs were too injurious both to themselves and their Posterity neither of which is likely A third part of the Regal Power say you is conversant about the Mâ—litia this the Kings of England have used to order and govern without Fellow or Competitor This is as false as all the rest that you have taken upon the credit of Fugitives For in the first place both our own Histories and those of Foreigners that have been any whit exact in the relation of our Affairs declare That the making of Peace and War always did belong to the Parliament And the Laws of St. Edward which our Kings were bound to swear that they would maintain make this appear beyond all exception in the Chapter De Heretochus viz. That there were certain Officers appointed in every Province and County throughout the Kingdom that were called Heretochs in Latin
and teach such a Doctor as you That the word Tyrant for all your concern is barely to have some understanding of words may be applied to one who is neither a Traytor nor a Murtherer But the Laws of England do not make it Treason in the King to stir up Sedition against himself or the people Nor do they say That the Parliament can be guilty of Treason by deposing a bad King nor that any Parliament ever was so tho they have often done it but our Laws plainly and clearly declare that a King may violate diminish nay and wholly lose his Royalty For that expression in the Law of St. Edward of losing the name of a King signifies neither more nor less than being deprived of the Kingly Office and Dignity which befel Chilperic King of France whose example for illustration-sake is taken notice of in the Law it self There is not a Lawyer amongst us that can deny but that the highest Treason may be committed against the Kingdom as well as against the King I appeal to Glanvile himself whom you cite If any man attempt to put the King to death or raise Sedition in the Realm it is High Treason So that attempt of some Papists to blow up the Parliament-House and the Lords and Commons there with Gunpowder was by King James himself and both Houses of Parliament declared to be High Treason not against the King only but against the Parliament and the whole Kingdom 'T would be to no purpose to quote more of our Statutes to prove so clear a Truth which yet I could easily do For the thing it self is ridiculous and absurd to imagine That High Treason may be committed against the King and not against the people for whose good nay and by whose leave as I may say the King is what he is So that you babble over so many Statutes of ours to no purpose you toil and wallow in our Ancient Law-Books to no purpose for the Laws themselves stand or fall by Authority of Parliament who always had power to confirm or repeal them and the Parliament is the sole Judge of what is Rebellion what High Treason Iaesa Majestas and what not Majesty never was vested to that degree in the Person of the King as not to be more conspicuous and more August in Parliament as I have often shown But who can endure to hear such a senseless Fellow such a French Mountebank as you declare what our Laws are And you English Fugitives so many Bishops Doctors Lawyers who pretend that all Learning and Ingenuous Literature is fled out of England with your selves was there not one of you that could defend the King's Cause and your own and that in good Latin too to be submitted to the judgment of other Nations but that this brain-sick beggarly Frenchman must be hired to undertake the Defence of a poor indigent King surrounded with so many Infant-Priests and Doctors This very thing I assure you will be a great imputation to you amongst Foreigners and you will be thought deservedly to have lost that Cause that you were so far from being able to defend by Force of Arms as that you cannot so much as write in behalf of it But now I come to you again good-man goose-cap who scribble so finely if at least you are come to your self again for I find you here towards the latter end of your Book in a deep sleep and dreaming of some voluntary Death or other that 's nothing to the purpose Then you deny that 't is possible for a King in his right wits to embroil his people in Seditions to betray his own Forces to be slaughtered by Enemies and raise Factions against himself All which things having been done by many Kings and particularly by Charles the late King of England you will no longer doubt I hope especially being addicted to Stoicism but that all Tyrants as well as profligate Villains are downright mad Hear what Horace says Whoever through a senseless Stupidity or any other cause whatsoever hath his Understanding so blinded as not to discern truth the Stoicks account of him as of a mad-man And such are whole Nations such are Kings and Princes such are all Man kind except those very few that are Wise So that if you would clear King Charles from the Imputation of acting like a Mad-man you must first vindicate his integrity and show that he never acted like an ill man But a King you say cannot commit Treason against his own Subjects and Vassals In the first place since we are as free as any People under Heaven we will not be impos'd upon by any Barbarous Custom of any other Nation whatsoever In the second place Suppose we had been the King's Vassals that Relation would not have obliged us to endure a Tyrant to Reign and Lord it over us All Subjection to Magistrates as our own Laws declare is circumscribed and confined within the bounds of Honesty and the Publick Good Read Leg. Hen. 1. Cap. 55. The Obligation betwixt a Lord and his Tenants is mutual and remains so long as the Lord protects his Tenant this all our Lawyers tells us but if the Lord be too severe and cruel to his Tenant and do him some heinous Injury The whole Relation betwixt them and whatever Obligation the Tenant is under by having done Homage to his Lord is utterly dissolv'd and extinguish'd These are the very words of Bracton and Fleta So that in some Case the Law it self warrants even a Slave or a Vassal to oppose his Lord and allows the Slave to kill him if he vanquish him in Battle If a City or a whole Nation may not lawfully take the Course with a Tyrant the Condition of Freemen will be worse than that of Slaves Then you go about to excuse King Charles's shedding of Innocent Blood partly by Murders committed by other Kings and partly by some Instances of Men put to Death by them lawfully For the matter of the Irish Massacre you refer the Reader to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and I refer you to Eiconoclastes The Town of Rochel being taken and the Towns-men betray'd assistance shown but not afforded them you will not have laid at Charlos's door nor have I any thing to say whether he was faulty in that business or not he did mischief enough at home we need not enquire into what Misdemeanors he was guilty of abroad But you in the mean time would make all the Protestant Churches that have at any time defended themselves by force of Arms against Princes who were profess'd Enemies of their Religion to have been guilty of Rebellion Let them consider how much it concerns them for the maintaining their Ecclesiastical Discipline and asserting their own Integrity not to pass by so great an Indignity offered them by a Person bred up by and amongst themselves That which troubles us most is that the English likewise were betray'd in that Expedition He who had design'd long ago to convert
in overlooking or secluding the rest be they of the Nobility or the common people nay though profiting by experience they should refuse to be governed any longer either by a King or a 〈◊〉 of Lords But in railing at that Supreme Council as you call it and at the Chair man thére you make your self very Ridiculous for that Council is not the Supreme Council as you dream it is but appointed by Authority of Parliament for a certain time only and consisting of â—orty Persons for the most part Members of Parliament any one of whom may be President if the rest Vote him into the Chair And there is nothing more common than for our Parliaments to appoint Committees of their own Members who when so appointed have Power to meet where they please and hold a kind of a little Parliament amongst themselves And the most weighty Affairs are often referred to them for Expedition and Secresie the care of the Navy the Army the Treasury in short all things whatsoever relating either to War or Peace Whether this be called a Council or any thing else the thing is ancient though the name may be new and it is such an Institution as no Government can be duly administred without it As for our putting the King to death and changing the Government forbear your bawling don't spit your Venom till going along with you through every Chapter I show whether you will or no by what Law by what Right and Justice all that was done But if you insist to know by what Right by what Law by that Law I tell you which God and Nature have enacted viz. that whatever things are for the Universal Good of the Whole State are for that reason lawful and just So wise Men of old used to answer such as you You find fault with us for Repealing Laws that had obtained for so many years but you do not tell as whether those Laws were good or bad nor if you did should we heed what you said for you buisy Puppy what have you to do with our Laws I wish our Magistrates had â—…ed more than they have both Laws and â—â—wyers if they had they would have consulted the Interest of the Christian Religion and that of the People better then they have done It frets you That Hob-goblins Sons of the Earth scarce Gentlemen at home scarce known to their own Countrymen should presume to do such things But you ought to have remembred what not only the Scriptures but Horace would have taught you viz. Valet ima summis Mutare insignem attenuat Deus Obscura promens c. The Power that did create can change the Scene Of things make mean of great and great of mean The brightest Glory can Eclipse with Night And place the most obscure in dazling Light But take this into the Bargain some of those who you say are scarce Gentlemen are not at all inferiour in birth to any of your party others whose Ancestors were not Noble have taken a course to attain to true Nobility by their own Industry and Vertue and are not inferior to men of the Noblest Descent and had rather be 〈◊〉 â—â—ns of the Earth provided to be their own Earth their own Native Country and â—ct like Men at home then being destitute of House or Land to relieve the necessities of Nature in a Foreign Country by selling of Smoke as thou dost an inconsiderable Fellow and a Jâ—ck-straw and who depâ—ndest upon the good will of thy Masters for a poor Stâ—pend for whom it were better to forgo thy travelling and return to thy own Kindred and Country-men if thou hadst not this one piece of Cunning to babble out some silly Prelections and Fooleries at so good a rate amongst Foreigners You find fault with our Magistrates for admitting such a Common-shore of all sorts of Sects Why should they not It belongs to the Church to cast them out of the Communion of the faithful not to the Magistrate to Banish them the Country provided they do not offend against the Civil Laws of the State Men at first united into Civil Societies that they might live safely and enjoy their Liberty without being wrong'd or opprest that they might live Religiously and according to the Doctrine of Christianity they united themselves into Churches Civil Societies have Laws and Churches have a Discipline peculiar to themselves and far differing from each other And this has been the occasion of so many Wars in Christendom to wit because the Civil Magistrate and the Church confounded their Jurisdictions And therefore we do not admit of the Popish Sect so as to tolerate Papists at all for we do not look upon that as a Religion but rather as an Hierarchical Tyranny under a â—loak of Religion cloath'd with the Spoils of the Civil Power which it has usurp'd to it self contrary to our Saviour's own Doctrine As for the Independents we never had any such amongst us as you describe they that we call Independents are only such as hold that no Classes or Synods have a Superiority over any particular Church and that therefore they ought all to be pluckt up by the roots as Branches or rather as the very Trunk of Hierarchy it self which is your own opinion too And from hence it was that the name of Independents prevailed amongst the Vulgar The rest of your Preface is taken up in endeavouring not only to stir up the hatred of all Kings and Monarchs against us but to perswade them to make a General War upon us Mithridates of old though in a different cause endeavoured to stir up all Princes to make War upon the Romans by laying to their charge almost just the same things that you do to ours viz. that the Romans aim'd at nothing but the Subversion of all Kingdoms that they had no regard to any thing whether Sacred or Civil that from their very first rise they never enjoy'd any thing but what they had acquir'd by force that they were Robbers and the greatest Enemies in the world to Monarchy Thus Mithridates exprest himself in a Letter to Arsaces King of the Parthians But how came you whose business it it is to make silly Speeches from your Desk to have the Confidence to imagine that by your persuasions to take up Arms and sounding an Alarm as it were you should be able so much as to influence a King amongst Boys at play especially with so shrill a Voice and unsavoury Breath that I believe if you were to have been the Trumpeter not so much as Homer's Mice would have waged War against the Frogs So little do we fear you Slug you any War or Danger from Foreign Princes through your silly Rhetorick who accuse us to them just as if you were at play That we toss Kings heads like Balls play at Bowls with Crowns and regard Scepters no more then if they were Fool 's Staves with heads on But you in the mean time you silly Logerhead deserve to have
of Cappadocia Whom all free People if you can have the confidence hereafter to set your foot within a free Countrey ought to cast out from amongst them and send to some remote parts of the World as a Prodigy of dire portent or to condemn to some perpetual drudgery as one devoted to slavery solemnly obliging themselves if they ever let you go to undergo a worse slavery under some cruelâ— silly Tyrant No man living can either devise himself or borrow from any other Expressions so full of Cruelty and Contempt as may not justly be apply'd to you But go on VVhen the Israelites asked a King of God they said they would set up a King that should have the same Rule and Dominion over them that the Kings of their neighbour Countries exercis'd over their Subjects But the Kings of the East we know had an unlimited Power as Virgil testifies Regem non sic Aegyptus ingens Lydia nec Populi Parthorum Medus Hydaspes Observant No Eastern Nation ever did adore The Majesty of Soveraign Princes more First What is that to us what sort of Kings the Israelites desired especially since God was angry with them not only for desiring such a King as other Nations had and not such a King as his own Law describes but barely for desiring a King Nor is it credible that they should desire an unjust King and one that should be out of the reach of all Laws who could not bear the Government of Samuel's Sons though under the power of Laws but from their Covetousness sought refuge in a King And lastly The Verse that you quote out of Virgil does not prove that the Kings of the East had an absolute unlimited Power for those Bees that he there speaks of and who reverence their Kings he says more than the Egyptians or Medes do theirs by the Authority of the same Poet magnis agitant sub legibus aevum Live under certain Fundamental Laws They do not live under a King then that 's tyed to no Law But now I 'le let you see how little reason you have to think I bear you an ill will Most people think you are a Knave but I 'le make it appear that you have only put on a Knaves Vizor for the present In your Introduction to your Discourse of the Pope's Supremacy you say that some Divines in the Council of Trent made use of the Government that is said to be amongst Bees to prove the Pope's Supremacy This fancy you borrow from them and urge it here with the same malice that they did there Now that very same answer that you gave them whilst you were an honest man now that you are become a Knave you shall give your self and pull off with your own hand that Vizor you 've now put on The Bees say you are a State and so natural Philosophers call them they have a King but a harmless one he is a Leader or Captain rather than a King he never beats nor pulls nor kills his subject Bees No wonder they are so observant of him then But in good Faith you had but ill luck to meddle with these Bees for though they are Bees of Trent they show you to be a Drone Aristotle a most exact writer of Politicks affirms that the Asiatique Monarchy which yet himself calls Barbarous was according to Law Politic. 3. And whereas he reckons up five several sorts of Monarchies four of those five he makes Governments according to Laws and with the consent of the People and yet he calls them Tyrannical forms of Government because they lodg so much power in one man's hand But the Kingdom of the Lacedaemonians he says is most properly a Kingdom because there all power is not in the King The fifth sort of Monarchy which he calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is where the King is all in all and to which he refers that that you call the right of Kings which is a Liberty to do what they list he neither tells us when nor where any such form of Government ever obtain'd Nor seems he to have mention'd it for any other purpose than to show how unjust absurd and tyrâ—nnical a Government it is You say that when Samuel would deter the people from chusing a King he propounded to them this right of Kings But whence had Samuel it Had he it from the written Law of God That can't be We have observ'd already that the Scriptures afford us a quite other Scheme of Soveraignty Had Samuel it then immediately from God himself by Revelation That 's not likely neither for God dislikes it discommends it â—…ds fault with it So that Samuel does not expound to the People any right of Kings appointed by God â—ut a corrupt and deprived mâ—nner of Governing â—…en 〈◊〉 by the Pride â—nd Ambition of Princes He tells not the people what their Kings ought to do but what they would do He told them the manner of their King as before he told us of the manner of the Priests the Sons of Eli for he useth the same word in both places which you in the 33d Page of your Book by an Hebrew Soloecism too call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That manner of theirs was Wicked and Odious and Tyranical It was no right but great wrong The Fathers have commented upon this place too I 'le instance in one that may stand for a great many and that 's Sulpitius Severus a contemporary and intimate Friend of St. Jerom and in St. Augustin's opinion a man of great Wisdom and Learning He tells us in his sacred History that Samuel in that place acquaints the people with the imperious Rule of Kings and how thâ—y use to Lord it over their Subjects Certainly it cannot be the right of Kings to domineer and be imperious But according to Salust that lawful Power and Authority that Kings were entrusted with for the Preservation of the publick Liberty and the good of the Common-wealth quickly degenerated into Pride and Tyranny And this is the sense of all Orthodox Divines and of all Lawyers upon that place of Samuel And you might have learn't from Sichardus that most of the Rabbins too were of the same mind at least not any one of them ever asserted that the absolute inherent right of Kings is there discoursed of Your self in your 5th Chapter Page 106. complain that not only Clemens Alexandrinus but all other Expositors mistake themselves upon this Text And you I 'le warrant ye are the only man that have had the good luck to hit the mark Now what a piece of folly and impudence is this in you to maintain in opposition to all Orthodox Expositors that those very actions which God so much condemns are the right of Kings And to pretend Law for them Though your self confess that that right is very often exercis'd in committing Outrages being injurious contumelious and the like Was any man ever to that degree sui juris so much his own Master as
that he might lawfully prey upon mankind bear down all that stood in his way and turn all things up-side down Did the Romans ever maintain as you say they did That any man might do these things suo Jure by vertue of some inherent right in himself Salust indeed makes C. Memmius a Tribune of the people in an invective Speech of his against the pride of the Nobility and their escaping unpunish'd howsoever they misbehaved themselves to use these words viz. to do whatever one has a mind to without fear of Punishment is to be a King This Saying you catch'd hold off thinking it would make for your purpose but consider it a little better and you 'll find your self deceiv'd Does he in that place assert the right of Kings Or does he not blame the common-people and chide them for their sloth in suffering their Nobility to Lord it over them as if they were out of the reach of all Law and in submitting again to that Kingly Tyranny which together with their Kings themselves their Ancestors had lawfully and justly rejected and banish'd from amongst them If you had consulted Tully you would have understood both Salust and Samuel better In his Oration pro C. Rabirio There is none of us ignorant says he of the manner of Kings These are their Lordly dictates Mind what I say and do accordingly Many passages to this purpose he quotes out of Poets and calls them not the right but the custom or the manner of Kings and he says We ought to read and consider them not only for curiosity sake but that we may learn to beware of 'em and avoid ' em You perceive how miserably you 're come off with Salust who though he be as much an enemy to Tyranny as any other Author whatsoever you thought would have Patroniz'd this Tyrannical right that you are establishing Take my word for 't the right of Kings seems to be tottering and even to further its own ruin by relying upon such weak props for its support and by endeavouring to maintain it self by such Examples and Authorities as would hasten its down-fall if it were further off than it is The extremity of right or law you say is the height of injury Summum jus summa injuria this saying is verified most properly in Kings who when they go to the utmost of their right fall into those courses in which Samuel makes the Right of Kings to consist And 't is a miserable Right which when you have said all you can for you can no otherwise defend than by confessing that it is the greatest injury that may be The extremity of Right or Law is said to be when a man ties himself up to Niceties dwells upon Letters and Syllables and in the mean time neglects the intent and equity of the Law or when a written Law is cunningly and maliciously interpreted this Cicero makes to have been the rise of that common saying But since 't is certain that all right flows from the fountain of Justice so that nothing can possibly be any man's right that is not just 't is a most wicked thing in you to affirm that for a King to be unjust rapacious tyrannical and as ill as the worst of 'em ever were is according to the right of Kings and to tell us that a Holy Prophet would have persuaded the people to such a senseless thing For whether written or unwritten whether extreme or remiss what Right can any Man have to be injurious Which lest you should confess to be true of other Men but not of Kings I have one Man's Authority to oppose you with who I think was a King himself and professeth that that Right of Kings that you speak of is odious both to God and himself It is in the 94th Psalm Shall the throne of iniquity have fellowship with thee that frameth mischief by a law Be not therefore so injurious to God as to ascribe this Doctrine to him viz. that all manner of wicked and flagitious Actions are but the Right of Kings since himself tells us that he abhors all fellowship with wicked Princes for this very reason Because under pretence of Soveraignty they create Misery and Vexation to their Subjects Neither bring up a false Accusation against a Prophet of God for by making him to teach us in this place what the Right of Kings is you do not produce the right Samuel but such another empty Shadow as was raised by the Witch of Endor Tho for my own part I verily believe that that infernal Samuel would not have been so great a Lyar but that he would have confess'd that what you call the Right of Kings is Tyranny We read indeed of Impieties countenanced by Law Jus datum sceleri you your self confess that they are bad Kings that have made use of this boundless License of theirs to do every thing Now this Right that you have introduc'd for the Destruction of Mankind not proceeding from God as I have prov'd it does not must needs come from the Devil and that it does really so will appear more clearly hereafter By vertue of this Liberty say you Princes may if they will And for this you pretend to have Cicero's Authority I 'm always willing to mention your Authorities for it generally happens that the very Authors you quote them out of give you an Answer themselves Hear else what Cicero says in his 4th Phillippicke What cause of War can be more just and warrantable than to avoid Slavery For tho a People may have the good fortune to live under a Gentle Master yet they are in a miserable Condition whose Prince may Tyrannize over them if he will May that is can has Power enough so to do If he meant it of his Right he would contradict himself and make that an unjust Cause of War which himself had affirm'd with the same Breath to be a most just one It is not therefore the Right of all Kings that you describe but the Injuriousness and Force and Violence of some Then you tell us what private men may do A private Man say you may Lie may be Ungrateful and so may Kings but what then May they therefore Plunder Murder Ravish without controul 'T is equally prejudicial and destructive to the Common-wealth whether it be their own Prince or a Robber or a Foreign Enemy that Spoils Massacres and Enslaves them And questionless being both alike Enemies of Humane Society the one as well as the other may lawfully be oppos'd and punish'd and their own Prince the rather because he tho raised to that Dignity by the Honours that his People have conferr'd upon him and being bound by his Oath to defend the Publick Safety betrays it notwithstanding all At last you grant That Moses prescribes Laws according to which the King that the People of Israel should chuse ought to Govern tho different from this Right that Samuel proposeth which words contain a double Contradiction to what you
have said before For whereâ—s you had affirm'd That a King was bound by no Law here you confess he is And you set up two contrary Rights one described by Moses and another by Samuel which is absurd But says the Prophet you shall be Servants to your King Tho I should grant that the Israelites were really so it would not presently follow that it was the Right of their Kings to have them so but that by the Usurpation and Injustice of most of them they were reduc'd to that Condition For the Prophet had foretold them that that importunate Petition of theirs would bring a Punishment from God upon them not because it would be their King 's Right so to harrass them but because they themselves had deserved it should be so If Kings are out of the reach of the Law so as that they may do what they list they are more absolute than any Masters and their Subjects in a more despicable Condition than the worst of Slaves The Law of God provided some Redress for them tho of another Nation if their Masters were Cruel and Unreasonable towards them And can we imagine that the whole Body of the People of a free Nation tho oppress'd and tyranniz'd over and prey'd upon should be left remediless That they had no Law to protect them no Sancturay to betake themselves to Can we think that they were delivered from the Bondage that they were under to the Egyptian Kings to be reduced into a worse to one of their own Brethren All which being neither agreeable to the Law of God nor to common Sense nothing can be more evident than that the Prophet declares to the People the Manner and not the Right of Kings nor the Manner of all Kings but of most Then you come to the Rabbins and quote two of them but you have as bad luck with them here as you had before For it is plain that that other Chapter that Rabbi Joses speaks of and which contains he says the Right of Kings is that in Deuteronomy and not in Samuel For Rabbi Judas says very truly and against you that that Discourse of Samuel's was intended only to frighten the People 'T is a most pernicious Doctrine to maintain that to be any ones Right which in its self is flat Injustice unless you have a mind to speak by contraries And that Samuel intended to affrighten them appears by the 18th Verse And ye shall cry out in that day because of your king which ye shall have chosen you and I will not hear you in that day saith the Lord. That was to be their Punishment for their Obstinacy in persisting to desire a King against the Mind and Will of God and yet they are not forbidden here either to pray against him or to endeavour to rid themselves of him For if they might lawfully pray to God against him without doubt they might use all lawful means for their own Deliverance For what Man living when he finds himself in any Calamity betakes himself to God so as to neglect his own Duty in order to a Redress and rely upon his lazy Prayers only But be it how it will what is all this to the Right of Kings or of the English People Who neither asked a King against the Will of God nor had one appointed us by God but by the Right that all Nations have to appoint their own Governors appointed a King over us by Laws of our own neither in Obedience to nor against any Command of God And this being the Case for ought I see we have done well in deposing our King and are to be commended for it since the Israelites sinned in asking one And this the Event has made appear for we when we had a King prayed to God against him and he heard us and delivered us But the Jews who not being under a Kingly Government desired a King he suffered to live in Slavery under one till at last after their return from the Babylonish Captivity they betook themselves to their former Government again Then you come to give us a display of your Talmudical Learning but you have as ill success with that as you have had with all the rest For whilst you are endeavouring to prove that Kings are not liable to any Temporal Judicature you quote an Authority out of the Treatise of the Sanhedrim That the King neither is judged of others nor does himself judge any Which is against the Peoples own Petition in Samuel for they desired a King that might judge them You labour in vain to salve this by telling us that it is to be understood of those Kings that reigned after the Babylonish Captivity For then what say ye to Maimonides He makes this difference betwixt the Kings of Israel and those of Juda that the Kings of the Posterity of David judge and are judged but the Kings of Israel do neither You contradict and quarrel with your self or your Rabbins and still do my work for me This say you is not to be understood of the Kings of Israel in their first Institution for in the 17th Verse 't is said You shall be his Servants that is he shall use ye to it not that he shall have any Right to make you so Or if you understand it of their Kings Right 't is but a Judgment of God upon them for asking a King the effects of which they were sensible of under most of their Kings tho not perhaps under all But you need no Antagonists you are such a perpetual Adversary to your self For you tell us now a Story as if you were arguing on my side how that first Aristobulus and after him Jâ—naeus Sirnamed Alexander did not receive that Kingly right that they pretended to from the Sanhedrim that great Treasury and Oracle of the Laws of that Nation but usurped it by degrees against the Will of the Senate For whose sake you say that Childish Fable of the principal Men of that Assembly being struck dead by the Angel Gabriel was first invented And thus you confess that this magnificent Prerogative upon which you seem mainly to rely viz. That Kings are not to be judged by any upon Earth was grounded upon this worse than an old Wives Tale that is upon a Rabbinical Fable But that the Hebrew Kings were liable to be call'd in Question for their Actions and to be punished with stripes if they were found faulty Sichardus shows at large out of the Writings of the Rabbins to which Author you are indebted for all that you make use of of that sort of Learning and yet you have the Impudence to be thwarting with him Nay we read in the Scripture that Saul thought himself bound by a Decree of his own making and in Obedience thereunto that he cast Lots with his Son Jonathan which of them two should die Uzzias likewise when he was thrust out of the Temple by the Priests as a Leper submitted as every private Person in
such a Case ought to do and ceas'd to be a King Suppose he should have refused to go out of the Temple and lay down the Government and live alone and had resolved to assert that Kingly Right of not being subject to any Law do you think the Priests and the People of the Jews would have suffered the Temple to be â—…d the Laws violated and live themselves in danger of the Infection It seems there are Laws against a 〈◊〉 King but none against a Tyrant Can any Man possibly be â—o mad and foolish as to fancy that the Laws should â—o far provide for the Peoples Health as tho some noisome Distemper should seize upon the King himself yet to prevent the Infection 's reaching them and make no Provision for the Security of their Lives and Estates and the very being of the whole State against the Tyranny of a cruel unjust Prince which is incomparably the greater mischief of the two But say you there can be no president shown of any one King that has been arâ—aigned in a Court of Justice and 〈…〉 to dye Sichardus answers that well enough â—is all one says he as if one should argue on this manner The Emperor of Germany never was 〈◊〉 to appear before one of the Prince-Electors therefore if the Prince Elector Palatine should Impeach 〈…〉 he were not bound to plead to it tho it appears by the Golden Bull that Charles the 〈◊〉 subjected himself and his Successors to that cognizance and Jurisdiction But no wonder if Kings were indulged in their Ambition and their Exorbitances passed by when the 〈…〉 corrupt and depraved that even private 〈◊〉 if they had either Money or Interest might 〈◊〉 the Law the guilty 〈…〉 of never so high 〈…〉 That 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that you speak of that 〈…〉 upon any other and acâ—… Earth which you say is pecuâ—… of Sovereign Princes Aristotle 〈…〉 Book of his 〈◊〉 Câ— 10. calls a most Tyrannical Form of Government and not in the least to be endured by a 〈◊〉 People And that Kings are not liable to be questioned for their Actions you prove by the 〈◊〉 of a very Worthy Author that Barbaâ—… Tyrant Mark 〈◊〉 one of those that subverted 〈◊〉 Commonwealth of Râ—me And yet he himself when he undertook an Expedition against the 〈◊〉 summon'd Herod before him to answer to a Chaâ—ge of Murder and would have punished him 〈◊〉 that Herod brib'd him So that Anthony's â—…ing this Prerogative Royal and your Defence of King Charles come both out of one and the same Spring And 't is very reasonable say you that it should be so for Kings derive their Authority from God alone What Kings are those I pray that do so For I deny that there ever were any such Kings in the World that derived their Authority from God alone Saul the first King of Israel had never reign'd but that the People desired a King even against the Will of God and tho he was proclaimed King once at Mizpah yet after that he lived a private Life and look'd to his Fathers Cattel till he was created so the second time by the People at Gilgal And what think ye of David Tho he had been anointed once by God was he not anointed the second time in Hebron by the Tribe of Judah and after that by all the People of Israel and that after a mutual Covenant betwixt him and them 2 Sam. 5. 1 Chron. 11. Now a Covenant lays an Obligation upon Kings and restrains them within Bounds Solomon you say succeeded him in the throne of the Lord and was acceptable to all men 1 Chron. 29. So that 't is something to be well-pleasing in the Eyes of the People Jehoiadah the Priest made Joash King but first he made him and the People enter into a Covenant to one another 2 Kings 11. I confess that these Kings and all that reign'd of David's Posterity were appointed to the Kingdom both by God and the People but of all other Kings of what Country soever I affirm that they are made so by the People only nor can you make it appear that they are appointed by God any otherwise than as all other things great and small are said to be appointed by him because nothing comes to pass without his Providence So that I allow the Throne of David was in a peculiar manner call'd The throne of the Lord whereas the Thrones of other Princes are no otherwise God's than all other things in the World are his which if you would you might have learnt out of the same Chapter Ver. 11 12. Thine O Lord is the greatness c. for all that is in the Heaven and in the Earth is thine Both riches and honour come of thee and thou reignest over all And this is so often repeated not to puff up Kings but to put them in mind tho they think themselves Gods that yet there is a God above them to whom they owe whatever they are and have And thus we easily understand what the Poets and the Essenes among the Jews mean when they tell us That 't is by God that Kings reign and that they are of Jupiter for so all of us are of God we are all his Off-spring So that this universal Right of Almighty God's and the Interest that he has in Princes and their Thrones and all that belongs to them does not at all derogate from the Peoples Right but that notwithstanding all this all other Kings not particularly and by name appointed by God owe their Soveraignty to the People only and consequently are accountable to them for the management of it The truth of which Doctrine tho the Common People are apt to flatter their Kings yet they themselves acknowledge whether good ones as Sarpedon in Homer is described to have been or bad ones as those Tyrants in Hâ—race 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Glaucus in Lycia we 're ador'd like Gods What makes 'twixt us and others so great odds He resolves the Question himself Because says he we excel others in Heroical Virtues Let us fight manfully then says he lest our Country-men tax us with Sloth and Cowardize In which words he intimates to us both that Kings derive their Grandeur from the People and that for their Conduct and Behaviour in War they are accountable to them Bad Kings indeed tho to cast some Terror into Peoples minds and beget a Reverence of themselves they declare to the World that God only is the Author of Kingly Government in their Hearts and Minds they reverence no other Deity but that of Fortune according to that passage in Horace Te Dacus asper te profugi Schythae Regumque matres barbarorum Purpurei metuunt Tyranni Injurioso ne pede proruas Stantem columnam neu populus frequens Ad arma cessantes ad arma Concitet imperiumque frangat All barb'rous People and their Princes too All Purple Tyrants honour you The very wandring Scythians do Support the Pillar
rejoyce that he is so pray that his Kingdom may come for he is worthy Nor is there any other either equal or next to him And yet a Kingly Government being put into the hands of unworthy and undeserving persons as most commonly it is may well be thought to have done more harm than good to Mankind Nor does it follow for all this that all Kings as such are Tyrants But suppose it did as for argument sake I 'le allow it does least you should think I 'm too hard with ye Make you the best use of it you can Then say you God himself may properly be said to be the King of Tyrants nay himself the worst of all Tyrants If the first of these conclusions does not follow another does which may be drawn from most parts of your Book viz. That you perpetually contradict not only the Scriptures but your own self For in the very last fore-going Period you had affirmed that God was the King of all things having himself created them Now he created Tyrants and Devils and consequently by your own reason is the King of such The 2'd of these Conclusions we detest and wish that blasphemous Mouth of yours were stopt up with which you affirm God to be the worst of Tyrants If he be as you often say he is the King and Lord of such Nor do you much advantage your Cause by telling us that Moses was a King and had the absolute and supream power of a King For we could be content that any other were so that could refer our matters to God as Moses did and consult with him about our affairs Exod. 18. v. 19. But neither did Moses notwithstanding his great familiatity with God ever assume a Liberty of doing what he would himself What says he of himself The people come unto me to enquire of God They came not then to receive Moses his own Dictates and Commands Then says Jethro ver 19. Be thou for the people to God-ward that thou mayst bring their causes unto God And Moses himself says Deut. 4. v 5. I have taught you statutes and judgments even as the Lord my God commanded me Hence it is that he is said to have been faithful in all the hause of God Numb 12 v. 7. So that the Lord Jehovah himself was the people's King and Moses no other than as it were an Interpreter or a Messenger betwixt him and them Nor can you without In piety and Sacriledg transfer this absolute supream Power and Authority from God to a man not having any Warrant from the word of God so to do which Moses used only as a Deputy or Substitute to God under whose Eye and in whose presence himself and the people always were But now for an aggravation of your wickedness though here you make Moses to have exercis'd an absolute and unlimitted Power in your apparat ad primat Page 230. You say that he together with the seventy elders ruled the people and that himself was the chief of the people but not their Master If Moses therefore were a King as certainly he was and the best of Kings and had a Supream and Legal Power as you say he had and yet neither was the people's Master nor Govern'd them alone then according to you Kings though indued with the Supream Power are not by Vertue of that Sovereign and Kingly Right of theirs Lords over the people nor ought to Govern them alone much less according to their own Will and Pleasure After all this you have the Impudence to feign a command from God to that people to set up a King over them as soon as they should be possessed of the holy land Deut. 17. For you craftily leave out the former words and shalt say I will set a King over me c. And now call to mind what you said before Page 42d and what I said I should have occasion to make use of viz. That the power was then in the people and that they were entirely free What follows argues you either Mad or irreligious take whether you lift God say you having so long before appointed a Kingly Government as best and most proper for that people what shall we say to Samuel's opposing it and God's own acting as if himself were against it How do these things agree He finds himself caught and observe now with how great malice against the Prophet and impiety against God he endeavours to disentangle himself We must consider says he That Samuel's own Sons then Judged the people and the people rejected them because of their corruption now Samuel was loth his Sons should be lay'd aside and God to gratify the Prophet intimated to him as if himself were not very well pleased with it Speak out ye wretch and never mince the matter You mean God dealt deceitfully with Samuel and he with the people It is not your Advocate but your self that are Frantick and Distracted who cast off all reverence to God Almighty so you may but seem to Honour the King Would Samuel prefer the Interest of his Sons and their Ambition and their Covetousness before the general good of all the people when they asked a thing that would be good and profitable for them Can we think that he would impose upon them by cunning and subtilty and make them believe things that were not Or if we should suppose all this true of Samuel would God himself countenance and gratify him in it would he dissemble with the people So that either that was not the right of Kings which Samuel taught the people or else that right by the Testimony both of God and the Prophet was an evil thing was burdensom injurious unprofitable and chargeable to the Common-wealth Or Lastly which must not be admitted God and the Prophet â—eceiv'd the People God frequently protests that he was extreamly displeas'd with them for asking a King v. 7th They have not rejected thee but they have rejected me that I should not reign over them As if it were a kind of Idolatry to ask a King that would even suffer himself to be ador'd and assume almost Divine Honour to himself And certainly they that subject themselves to a worldly Master and set him above all Laws come but a little short of chusing a strange God And a strange one it commonly is brutish and void of all sense and reason So 1st of Sam. Chap. 10th v. 19th And ye have this day rejected your God who himself saved you out of all your adversities and your tribulation and ye have said unto him Nay but set a king over us c. and Chap 12th v. 12th Ye said unto me Nay but a king shall reign over us when the Lord your God was your king and v. the 17th See that your wickedness is great that ye have done in the sight the Lord in asking you a king And Hosea speaks contemptibly of the King Chap. 13. v. 10th 11th I will be thy king where is any other
if such a Mungril-Cur as thou art did not bark at them so Currishly the Master if it shall please ye of St. I upus St. Wolf it seems complains that the Mastiffs are mad Fanaticks Germanus heretofore whose Colleague that Lupus of Triers was deposed our Incestuous King Vortigerne by his own Authority And therefore St. Lupus despises thee the Master not of St. Lupus a Holy Wolf but of some hunger-starv'd thieving little Wolf or other as being more contemptible than that Master of Vipers of whom Martial makes mention who hast by Relation a barking She-wolf at home too that domineers over thee most wretchedly at whose Instigations as I am informed thou hast wrote this stuff And therefore it is the less wonder that thou shouldst endeavour to obtrude an Absolute Regal Government upon others who hast been accustomed to bear a Female Rule so servilely at home thy self Be therefore in the Name of God the Master of a Wolf lest a She-wolf be thy Mistress be a Wolf thy self be a Monster made up of a Man and a Wolf whatever thou art the English Mastiffs will but make a laughing-stock of thee But I am not now at leisure to hunt for Wolves and will put an end therefore to this Digression You that but a while ago wrote a Book against all manner of superiority in the Church now call St. Peter the Prince of the Apostles How inconstant you are in your Principles But what says Peter Submit your selves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake whether it be to the King as Supream or to Governours as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evil doers and the praise of them that do well for so is the will of God c. This Epistle Peter wrote not only to private Persons but those Strangers scatter'd and dispers'd through Asia who in those places where they sojourned had no other right than that the Laws of Hospitality intituled them to Do you think such mens case to be the same with that of Natives Free-born Subjects Nobility Senates Assemblies of Estates Parliaments Nay is not the case far different of private Persons tho' in their own Countrey and Senators Magistrates without whom Kings themselves cannot possibly subsist But let us suppose that St. Peter had directed his Epistle to the Natural born Subjects and those not private persons neither suppose he had writ to the Senate of Rome What then No Law that is grounded upon a reason expresly set down in the Law it self obligeth further than the reason of it extends Be subject says he 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That is according to the genuine sense and import of the word be subordinate or legally subject For the law Aristotle says is order Submit for the Lord's sake Why so Because a King is an Officer appointed by God for the punishment of evil doers and the praise of them that do well For so is the will of God To wit That we should submit and yield Obedience to such as are here described There is not a word spoken of any other You see the ground of this Precept and how well'tis laid The Apostle adds in the 16th v. as Free therefore not as Slaves What now if Princes pervert the design of Magistracy and use the power that is put into their Hands to the ruin and destruction of good men and the praise and encouragement of evil doers Must we all be condemn'd to perpetual Slavery not private persons only but our Nobility all our inferior Magistrates our very Parliament it self Is not temporal Government call'd a humane Ordinance How comes it to pass then that mankind should have power to appoint and constitute what may be good and profitable for one another and want power to restrain or suppress things that are universally mischievious and destructive That Prince you say whom St. Peter enjoyns Subjection to was Nero the Tyrant And from thence you infer that it is our Duty to submit and yield Obedience to such But it is not certain that this Epistle was writ in Nerâ—'s Reign 'T is as likely to have been writ in Claudius his time And they that are commanded to submit were private Persons and Strangers they were no Consuls no Magistrates 'T was not the Roman Senate that St. Peter directed his Epistle to Now let us hear what use you make of St. Paul for you take a freedom with the Apostles I find that you will not allow us to take with Princes you make St. Peter the chief of them to day and to morrow put another in his place St. Paul in his 13th Chap. to the Romans has these words Let every soul be subject unto the higher Powers for there is no power but of God the powers that be are ordained of God I confess he writes this to the Romans not to Strangers dispers'd as Peter did but yet he writes to private persons and those of the meaner rank And yet he gives us a true and a clear account of the reason the Original and the design of Government and shows us the true and proper ground of our Obedience that it 's far from imposing a necessity upon us of being Slaves Let every Soul says he that is let every man submit Chrysosthome tells us that St. Paul's design in this Discourse was to make it appear that our Saviour did not go about to introduce principles inconsistent with the Civil Government but such as strengthned it and settled it upon the surest Foundations He never intended then by setting Nero or any other Tyrant out of the reach of all Laws to enslave mankind under his lust and cruelty He intended too says the same Author to disswade from unnecessary and causeless Wars But he does not condemn a War taken up against a Tyrant a bosom Enemy of his own Countrey and consequently the most dangerous that may be 'T was commonly said in those days that the Doctrine of the Apostles was seditious themselves persons that endeavour'd to shake the seâ—lâ—d â—aws and Government of the world that this was what they aim'd at in all they said and did The Apostle in this Chapter stops the mouths of such gain sayers â—o that the Apostles did not write in defence of Tyrants as you do but they asserted such things as made them suspected to be enemies to the Government they liv'd under things that stood in need of being explained and interpreted and having another sense put upon them than was generally receiv'd St. Chrysostme has now taught us what the Apostle's design was in this Discourse let us now examine his words Let every soul be subject to the higher powers He tells us not what those Higher Powers are nor who they are for he never intended to overthrow all Governments and the several Constitutions of Nations and subject all to some one man's will Every good Emperour acknowledged that the Laws of the Empire and the Authority of the Senate was above himself and
to this purpose in that Discourse concerning Bishops which under a feigned name you wrote against Petavius the Jâ—suit though your self are more a Jâ—suit than he â—ay worse than any of that Crew We have already heard the sense of the Scripture upon this Subject and it has been worth our 〈◊〉 to take some pains to find it out But perhaps it will not be so to enquire into the Judgments of the Fathers and ransack their Volumes for if they assert any thing which is not warranted by the word of God we may safely reject their authority be it never so great and particularly that expression that you alledg out of Irenaeus that God in his Providence orders it so that such Kings reign as are suitable to and proper for the people they are to Govern all Circumstances considered That expression I say is directly contrary to Scripture For though God himself declared openly that it was better for his own people to be Governed by Judges than by Kings yet he left it to them to change that form of Government for a worse if they would themselves And we read frequently that when the body of the people has been good they have had a wicked King and contrariwise that a good King has sometimes reign'd when the people have been wicked So that wise and prudent men are to consider and see what is profitable and fit for the people in general for it is very certain that the same form of Government is not equally convenient for all Nations nor for the same Nation at all times but sometimes one sometimes another may be more proper according as the industry and valour of the people may increase or decay But if you deprive the people of this liberty of setting up what Government they like best among themselves you take that from them in which the life of all Civil Liberty consists Then you tell us of Justin Martyr of his humble and submissive behaviour to the Antonini those best of Emperours as if any body would not do the like to Princes of such moderation as they were How much worse Christians are we in these days than they were They were content to live under Prince of another Religion Alas They were private persons and infinitely inferior to the contrary party in strength and number But now Papists will not endure a protestant Prince nor Protestants one that is Popish You do well and discreetly in showing your self to be neither Papist nor Protestant And you are very liberal in your concessions for now you confess that all sorts of Christians agree in thrt very thing that you alone take upon you with so much impudence and wickedness to cry down and oppose And how unlike those Fathers that you commend do ye show your self They wrote Apologies for the Christians to Heathen Princes you in defence of a wicked Popish King against Christians and Protestants Then you entertain us with a number of impertinent quotations out of Athenagoras and Tertullian Things that we have already heard out of the Writings of the Apostles much more clearly and intelligibly exprest But Tertullian was quite of a different opinion from yours of a King 's being a Lord and Master over his Subjects Which you either knew not or wickedly dessembled For he though he were a Christian and directed his discourse to a Heathen Emperor had the confidence to tell him that an Emperor ought not to be called Lord. Augustus himself says â—e that formed this Empire refus'd this appellation 'T is a Title proper to God only Not but that the Title of Lord and Master may in some sense be ascribed to the Emperor But there is a peculiar sense of that word which is proper to God only and in that sense I will not ascribe it to the Emperor I am the Emperor's free-man God alone is my Lord and Master And the same Author in the same Discourse how inconsistent says he are those two Appellations Father of his Countrey and Lord and Master And now I wish you much joâ— of Tertullian's authority whom it had been a great deal better you had let alone But Tertullian calls them Parricides that slew Domitian And he does well for so they were his Wife and Servants conspir'd against him And they set one Parthenius and Stephanus who were accus'd for concealing part of the publick Treasure to make him away If the Senate and the people of Rome had proceeded against him according to the custom of their Ancestors had given Judgment of Death against him as they did once against Nero and had made search for him to put him to Death do ye think Tertullian would have called them Parricides If he had he would have deserv'd to be hang'd as you do I give the same answer to your quotation out of Origen that I have given already to what you have cited out of Irenaeus Athanasius indeed says that Kings are not accountable before humane Tribunals But I wonder who told Athanasius this I do not hear that he produceth any authority from Scripture to confirm this assertion And I 'le rather believe Kings and Emperors themselves who deny that they themselves have any such Priviledg than I will Athanasius Then you quote Ambrosius who after he had been a Proconsul and after that became a Catechumen at last got into a Bishoprick But for his authority I say that his Interpretation of those words of David against thee only have I sinued is both ignorant and adulatory He was willing all others should be enthrall'd to the Emperor that he might enthral the Emperor to himself We all know with what a Papâ—l pride and arrogancy he treated Theodosius the Emperor how he took upon him to declare him guilty of that 〈◊〉 at Thessâ—lonica and to forbid him coming into the Church how miserably raw in Divinity and unacquainted with the Doctrine of the Gospel he shewed himself upon that occasion When the Emperor fell down at his feet he commanded him to get him out of the Porch At last when he was received again into the Communion of the Church and had offered because he continued standing near to the 〈◊〉 the Magisterial Pielate commanded him out of the raâ—s O Emperor says he these inner places are for the Priests only 't is not lawful for others to come within them Does this sound like the behaviour of a Minister of the Gospel or like that of a Jewish High-Priest And yet this man such as we hear he was would have the Emperor ride other people that himself might ride him which is a common trick of almost all Ecclessiasticks With words to this purpose he put back the Emperor as inferior to himself You râ—…over men said he that are partakers of the same Nature and Fellow-servants with your self For there is one only Lord and King over all to wit the Creator of all This is very pretty This piece of truth which the craft and flattery of Clergy-men has all along
much as in them lay and petition'd the Emperor that the People of the Jews might be govern'd without a King Caesar was moved at their entreaty and did not appoint a King over them but a Governour whom they called an Ethnarch When that Governor had presided ten years over Judea the People sent Ambassadors again to Rome and accused him of Tyranny Caesar heard them graciously sent for the Governour condemn'd him to perpetual Exile and banished him to Vienna Answer me now That People that accused their own Princes that desir'd their Condemnation that desir'd their Punishment would not they themselves rather if it had been in their Power and that they might have had their choice would not they I say rather have put them to Death themselves You do not deny but that the People and the Nobles often took up Arms against the Roman Deputies when by their Avarice or their Cruelty their Government was burdensome and oppressive But you give a ridiculous reason for this as all the rest of yours are You say They were not yet accustomed to the Yoak very like they were not under Alexander Herod and his Son But say you they would not raise War against Caius Caesar nor Petronius I confess they did not and they did very prudently in abstaining for they were not able Will you hear their own words upon that occasion We will not make War say they because we cannot That thing which they themselves acknowledge they refrain'd from for want of Ability you false Hypocrite pretend they abstain'd from out of Religion Then with a great deal of toil you do just nothing at all for you endeavour to prove out of the Fathers tho you had done it as superficially before that Kings are to be prayed for That good Kings are to be pray'd for no Man denies nay and bad ones too as long as there are any hopes of them so we ought to pray for Highway-men and for our Enemies But how Not that they may Plunder Spoil and Murder us but that they may repent We pray both for Thieves and Enemies and yet whoever dreamt but that it was lawful to put the Laws in execution against one and to fight against the other I value not the Egyptian Liturgy that you quote but the Priest that you mention who prayed that Commodus might succeed his Father in the Empire did not pray for any thing in my opinion but Imprecated all the mischiefs imaginable to the Roman State You say that we have broken our faith which we engaged more than once in solemn Assemblies to preserve the Authority and Majesty of the King But because hereafter you are more large upon that subject I shall pass it by in this place and talk with you when you come to it again You return then to the Fathers concerning whom take this in short Whatever they say which is not warranted by the Authority of the Scriptures or by good reason shall be of no more regard with me than if any other ordinary man had said it The first that you quote is Tertullian who is no Orthodox Writer notorious for many errors whose authority if he were of your opinion would stand you in no stead But what says he he condemns Tumults and Rebellions So do we But in saying so we do not mean to destroy all the peoples Rights and Priviledges all the Authority of Senates the Power of all Magistrates the King only excepted The Fathers declaâ—m against Seditions rashly raised by the giddy heat of the multitude they speak not of the inferior Magistrates of Senates of Parliaments encouraging the people to a lawful opposing of a Tyrant Hence Ambrose whom you quote Not to resist says he but to weep and to â—igh these are the Bulwarks of the Priesthood what one is there of our little number who dares say to the Emperor I do not like your Laws This is not allowed the Priests and shall Lay-men pretend to it 'T is evident of what sort of persons he speaks viz. of the Priests and such of the people as are private men 〈◊〉 of the Magistrates You see by how weak and pre 〈◊〉 a reason he lighted a Torch as it were to the distentions that were afterwards to arise betwixt the Lâ—ity and the Clergy concerning even Civil i.e. Temporal Laws But because you think you press hardest upon us with the Examples of the Primitive Christians who though they were harassed as much as a people could be yet you say they never took up 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Emperour I will make it appear in the first place that for the most part they could 〈◊〉 â—…ondly that whenever they could they did And thirdly that whether they did or did not they 〈◊〉 such a sort of people as that their example deâ—… 〈◊〉 to have little sway with us First therefore 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 can be ignorant of this that when the Com 〈◊〉 of Rome expired the whole and Soverignâ— power in the Empire was setled in the Empe 〈◊〉 that all the Soldier were under his Pay in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 if the whole Body of the Senate the E 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and all the common people had endea 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a change they might have made way for a 〈◊〉 of themselves but could not in any 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 then lost Liberty for the Empire would 〈◊〉 have 〈◊〉 though they might per 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so lucky as to have kill'd the Emperour This being 〈◊〉 what could the Christians do 't is true there were a great many of them but they were dispersed they were generally persons of mean quality and but of small interest in the world How many of them would one Legion have been able to keep in awe Could so inconsiderable a body of men as they were in those days ever expect to accomplish an Enterprize that many famous Generals and whole Armies of tried Soldiers had lost their lives in attempting when about three hundred years after our Saviour's Nativity which was near upon twenty years before the Reign of Constantine the Great when Diâ—clesian was Emperour there was but one Christian Legion in the whole Roman Empire which Legion for no other reason than because it consisted of Christians was slain by the â—est of the Army at a Town in France called Octodurum The Christians say you conspir'd not with Cassius with Albinus with Niger and does Tertullian think they merited by not being willing to lose their lives in the quarrels of Inndels 'T is evident therefore that the Christians could not free themselves from the yoke of the Roman Emperours and it could be no ways advantagious to their interest to conspire with Infidels as long as Heathen Emperors reign'd But that afterwards the Christians made War upon Tyrants and defended themselves by force of Arms when there was occasion and many times revenged upon Tyrants their Enormities I am now about to make appear In the first place Constantite being a Christian made War upon Lacinius and cut him oâ—â— who was his
slaughters were made on both sides You may remember Damasus and Vrsicinus who were Contemporaries with Ambrose It would be too long to relate the Tumultuary Insurrections of the Inhabitants of Constantinople Antiach and Alexandria especially those under the Conduct and Management of Cyrillus whom you extol as a Preacher up of Obedience when the Monks in that fight within the City had almost slain Orestes Theodosius's Deputy Now who can sufficiently wonder at your Impudence or Carelessness and Neglect Till St. Austin's time say you and lower down than the age that he lived in there is not any mention extant in History of any private person of any Commander or of any number of Conspirators that have put their Prince to death or taken up Arms against him I have named to you out of known and approved Histories both private persons and Magistrates that with their own hands have slain not only bad but very good Princes Whole Armies of Christians many Bishops amongst them that have fought against their own Emperors You produce some of the Fathers that with a great flourish of words persuade or boast of Obedience to Princes And I on the other side produce both those same Fathers and others besides them that by their actions have declined Obedience to their Princes even in lawful things have defended themselves with a Military Force against them others that have opposed forcibly and wounded their Deputies others that being Competitors for Bishopricks have maintained Civil Wars against one another As if it were lawful for Christians to wage War with Christians for a Bishoprick and Citizens with Citizens but unlawful to fight against a Tyrant in defence of our Liberty of our Wives and Children and of our Lives themselves Who would own such Fathers as these You produce St. Austin who you say asserts that the Power of a Master over his Servants and a Prince over his Subjects is one and the same thing But I answer If St. Austin assert any such thing he asserts what neither our Saviour nor any of his Apostles ever asserted tho for the confirmation of that assertion than which nothing can be more false he pretends to rely wholly upon their Authority The three or four last Pages of this Fourth Chapter are stuffed with meer Lies or things carelessly and loosely put together that are little to the purpose And that every one that reads them will discover by what has been said already For what concerns the Pope against whom you declaim so loudly I am content you should bawl at him till you are hoarse But whereas you endeavour to persuade the ignorant That all that called themselves Christians yielded an entire obedience to Princes whether good or bad till the Papal Power grew to that height that it was acknowledged superior to that of the Civil Magistrate and till he took upon him to absolve Subjects from their Allegiance I have sufficiently proved by many Examples before and since the age that St. Augustin lived in that nothing can be more false Neither does that seem to have much more truth in it which you say in the last place viz. That Pope Zachary absolved the French-men from their Oath of Allegiance to their King For Francis Hottoman who was both a French-man and a Lawyer and a very Learned man in the 13th Chapter of his Francogallia denies that either Chilperic was deposed or the Kingdom translated to Pepin by the Pope's Authority and he proves out of very Ancient Chronicles of that Nation That the whole affair was transacted in the great Council of the Kingdom according to the Original Censtitution of that Government Which being once done the French Histories and Pope Zachary himself deny that there was any necessity of absolving his Subjects from their Allegiance For not only Hottoman but Guicciard a very eminent Historian of that Nation informs us That the Ancient Records of the Kingdom of France testifie That the Subjects of that Nation upon the first institution of Kingship amongst them reserved a power to themselves both of Chusing their Princes and of Deposing them again if they thought fit And that the Oath of Allegiance which they took was upon this express condition to wit That the King should likewise perform what at his Coronation he swore to do So that if Kings by mis-governing the people committed to their charge first broke their own Oath to their Subjects there needs no Pope to dispense with the people's Oaths the Kings themselves by their own perfidiousness having absolved their Subjects And finally Pope Zachary himself in a Letter of his to the French which you your self quote renounces and ascribes to the people that Authority which you say he assumes to himself For if a Prince be accountable to the People being beholden to them for his Royalty if the people since they make Kings have the same Right to depose them as the very words of that Pope are it is not likely that the French men would by any Oath depart in the least from that Ancient Right or ever tye up their own hands so as not to have the same Right that their Ancestors always had to depose bad Princes as well as to honour and obey good ones nor is it likely that they thought themselves obliged to yield that Obedience to Tyrants which they swore to yield only to good Princes A people obliged to Obedience by such an Oath is discharged of that obligation when a Lawful Prince becomes a Tyrant or gives himself over to Sloth and Veluptuousness the rule of Justice the very Law of Nature dispenseth with such a people's Allegiance So that even by the Pope's own opinion the people were under no obligation to yield Obedience to Chilperic and consequently had no need of a Dispensation CHAP. V. THO I am of opinion Salmasius and always was That the Law of God does exactly agree with the Law of Nature so that having shown what the Law of God is with respect to Princes and what the practice has been of the people of God both Jews and Christians I have at the same time and by the same Discourse made to appear what is most agreeable to the Law of Nature yet because you pretend to confute us most powerfully by the Law of Nature I will be content to admit that to be necessary which before I had thought would be superfluous that in this Chapter I may demonstrate That nothing is more suitable to the Law of Nature than that Punishment be inflicted upon Tyrants Which if I do not evince I will then agree with you that likewise by the Law of God they are exempt I do not purpose to frame a long Discourse of Nature in general and the original of Civil Societies that Argument has been largely handled by many Learned men both Greek and Latin but I shall endeavour to be as short as may be and my design is not so much to confute you my self who would willingly have spared this
what Seneca himself and all good Men even in Nero's time thought was fit to be done to a Tyrant and how vertuous an Action how acceptable to God they thought it to kill one So every good Man of Rome as far as in him lay kill'd Domitian Pliny the Second owns it openly in his Panegyrick to Trajan the Emperor We took pleasure in dashing those proud Looks against the Ground in piercing him with our Swords in mangling him with Axes as if he had bled and felt pain at every stroke No man could so command his passion of Joy but that he counted it a piece of Revenge to behold his mangled Limbs his Members torn asunder and after all his stern and horâ—â—â— Statues thrown down and burnt And afterwards They cannot love good Princes enough that cannot hate bad ones as they deserve Then amongst other Enormities of Domitian he reckons this for one that he put to Death Epâ—phroditus that had kill'd Nero Had we forgotten the avenging Nero's Death Was it likely that he would suffer his Life and Actions to be ill spoken of whose Death he revenged He seems to have thought it almost a Crime not to kill Nero that counts it so great a one to punish him that did it By what has been said it is evident that the best of the Romans did not only kill Tyrants as oft as they could and howsoever they could but that they thought it a commendable and a praise-worthy Action so to do as the Grecians had done before them For when they could not proceed judicially against a Tyrant in his life-time being interior to him in Strength and Power yet after his Death they did it and condemn'd him by the Valerian Law For Valerius Publicola Junius Brutus his Colleague when he saw that Tyrants being guarded with Soldiers could not be brought to a legal Tryal he devised a Law to make it lawful to kill them any way tho uncondemn'd and that they that did it should afterwards give an account of their so doing Hence when Cassius had actually run Caligula through with a Sword tho every Body else had done it in their hearts Valerius Asiaticus one that had been Consul being present at the time cried out to the Soldiers that began to Mutiny because of his Death I wish I my self had kill'd him And the Senate at the same time was so far from being displeased with Cassius for what he had done that they resolved to extirpate the Memory of the Emperors and to raze the Temples that had been erected in Honour of them When Claudius was presently saluted Emperor by the Soldiers they forbad him by the Tribune of the People to take the Government upon him but the Power of the Soldiers prevailed The Senate declared Nero an Enemy and made enquiry after him to have punished him according to the Law of their Ancestors which required that he should be stript naked and hung by the Neck upon a forked Stake and whipt to Death Consider now how much more mildly and moderately the English dealt with their Tyrant tho many are of Opinion that he caused the spilling of more Blood than ever Nero himself did So the Senate condemn'd Domitian after his Death they commanded his Statues to be pull'd down and dash'd in pieces which was all they could do When Commodus was slain by his own Officers neither the Senate nor the People punisht the Fact but declared him an Enemy and enquired for his dead Corps to have made it an Example An Act of the Senate made upon that occasion is extant in Lampridius Let the Enemy of his Country be depriv'd of all his Titles let the Parricide be drawn let him be torn in pieces in the Spoliary let the Enemy of the gods the Executioner of the Senate be drag'd with a Hake c. The same Persons in a very full Senate condemn'd Didius Julianus to Death and sent a Tribune to slay him in the Palace The same Senate deposed Maximinus and declared him an Enemy Let us hear the words of the Decree of the Senate concerning him as Capitolinus relates it The Consul put the question Conscript Fathers what is your pleasure concerning the Maximines They answered They are Enemies they are Enemies who ever kills them shall be rewarded Would you know now whether the People of Rome and the Provinces of the Empire obeyed the Senate or Maximine the Emperor Hear what the same Author says The Senate wrote Letters into all the Provinces requiring them to take care of their Common Safety and Liberty the Letters were publickly read And the Friends the Deputies the Generals the Tribunes the Soldiers of Maximine were slain in all places very few Cities were found that kept their Faith with the publick Enemy Herodian relates the same thing But what need we give any more Instances out of the Roman Histories Let us now see what manner of thing the Right of Kings was in those days in the Nations that bordered upon the Empire Ambiorix a King of the Gauls confesseth The Nature of his Dominion to be such that the People have as great Power over him as he over them And consequently as well as he judged them he might be judged by them Vercingetorix another King in Gaul was accused of Treason by his own People These things Caesar relates in his History of the Gallick Wars Neither is the Regal Power among the Germans absolute and uncontroulable lesser matters are ordered and disposed by the Princes greater Affairs by all the People The King or Prince is more considerable by the Authority of his Persuasions than by any Power that he has of Commanding If his Opinion be not approv'd of they declare their dislike of it by a general murmuring Noise This is out of Tacitus Nay and you your self now confess that what but of late you exclaim'd against as an unheard of thing has been often done to wit That no less than fifty Scotish Kings have been either Banished or Imprisoned or put to Death nay and some of them publickly executed Which having come to pass in our very Island why do you as if it were your Office to conceal the violent Deaths of Tyrants by burying them in the dark exclaim against it as an abominable and unheard of thing You proceed to commend the Jews and Christians for their Religious Obearence even to Tyrants and to heap one lye upon another all which I have already conâ—uted you in Of late you made large Enccmiums of the Obedience of the Assyrians and Persians and now you reckon up their Rebellions and tho but of late you said they never had Rebell'd at all now you give us a great many reasons why they Rebell'd so often Then you resume the Narrative of the manner of our King's Death which you had broken off long since that if you had not taken care suâ—â—iâ—ntly to appear ridiculous and a Fool then you may do it now You said He was led through the Members of
might be occasioned by the King's Death and the change of Affairs than they would be profited by the punishment of one Man or two But when they begin to be universally injurious and insufferable it has always been the Opinion of all Nations that then being Tyrants it is lawful to put them to Death any how condemn'd or uncondemn'd Hence Cicero in his Second Phillippick says thus of those that kill'd Caesar They were the first that ran through with their Swords not a Man who affected to be King but who was actually setled in the Government which as it was a worthy and godlike Action so it 's set before us for our imitation How unlike are you to him Murder Adultery Injuries are not regal and publick but private and personal Crimes Well said Parasite you have obliged all Pimps and Prosâ—igates in Courts by this Expression How ingeniously do you act both the Parasite and the Pimp with the same breath A King that is an Adulterer or a Murderer may yet govern well and consequently ought not to be put to Death because together with his Life he must lose his Kingdom and it was never yet allowed by God's Laws or Man's that for one and the same Crime a Man was to be punished twice Infamous foul-mouth Wretch By the same reason the Magistrates in a popular State or in an Aristocracy ought never to be put to Death for fear of double Punishment no Judge no Senator must dye for they must lose their Magistracy too as well as their Lives As you have endeavoured to take all Power out of the Peoples hands and vest it in the King so you would all Majesty too A delegated translatitious Majesty we allow but that Majesty does chiefly and primarily reside in him you can no more prove than you can that Power and Authority does A King you say cannot commit Treason against his People but a People may against their King And yet a King is what he is for the People only not the People for him Hence I infer that the whole Body of the People or the greater part of them must needs have greater Power than the King This you deny and begin to cast up accounts He is of greater Power than any one than any two than any 〈◊〉 than any ten than any hundred than any thousand than any ten thousand be it so He is of more Power than half the People I will not deny that neither Add now half of the other half will be not have more Power than all thâ—se Not at all Go on why do you take away the Board Do you not understand Progression in Arithmetick He begins to reckon after another manner Has not the King and the Nobility together more Power No Mr Changeling I deny that too If by the Nobility whom you stile Optimates you mean the Peers only for it may happen that amongst the whole number of them there may not be one Man deserving that Appellation for it often falls out that there are better and wiser Men than they amongst the Commons whom in Conjunction with the greater or the better part of the People I should not scruple to call by the Name of and take them for all the People But if the King is not Superior in Power to all the People together he is then a King but of single Persons he is not the King of the whole Body of the People You say well no more he is unless they are content he should be so Now balance your accounts and you will find that by miscasting you have lost your Principal The English say that the Right of Majesty originally and principally resides in the People which Principle would introduce a Confusion of all States What of an Aristocracy and Democracy But let that pass What if it would overthrow a Gynaecocracy too i. e. a Government of one or more Women under which State or Form of Government they say you are in danger of being beaten at home would not the English do you a kindness in that you sheepish Fellow you But there 's no hope of that For 't is most justly so ordered since you would subject all Mankind to Tyranny abroad that you your self should live in a scandalous most unmanlike Slavery at home We must tell you you say what we mean by the word People There are a great many other things which you stand more in need of being told For of things that more immediately concern you you seem altogether ignorant and never to have learnt any thing but Words and Letters nor to be capable of any thing else But this you think you know that by the word People we mean the Common People only exclusive of the Nobility because we have put down the House of Lords And yet that very thing shows that under the word People we comprehend all our Natives of what Order and Degree soever in that we have setled one Supreme Senate only in which the Nobility also as a part of the People not in their own Right as they did before but Representing those Burroughs or Counties for which they may be chose may give their Votes Then you inveigh against the Common People as being Blind and Brutish Ignorant of the Art of Governing you say there 's nothing more Empty more Vain more Inconstant more Uncertain than they All which is very true of your self and it 's true likewise of the Rabble but not of the middle sort amongst whom the most prudent Men and most skilful in Affairs are generally found others are most commonly diverted either by Luxury and Plenty or by Want and Poverty from Virtue and the Study of Laws and Government There are many ways you say by which Kings come to the Crown so as not to he beholden to the People at all for it and especially those that inherit a Kingdom But those Nations most certainly be Slaves and born to Slavery that acknowledge any one to be their Lord and Master so absolutely as that they are his inheritance and come to him by descent without any Consent of their own they deserve not the Appellation of Subjects nor of Freemen nor can they be justly reputed such nor are they to be accounted as a Civil Society but must be looked on as the Possessions and Estate of their Lord and his Family For I see no difference as to the Right of Ownership betwixt them and Slaves and Beasts Secondly They that come to the Crown by Conquest cannot acknowledge themselves to have receiv'd from the People the Power they usurp We are not now discoursing of a Conqueror but of a Conquered King what a Conqueror may lawfully do we 'll discourse elsewhere do you keep to your Subject But whereas you ascribe to Kings that Ancient Right that Masters of Families have over their Housholds and take an example from thence of their absolute Power I have shown already over and over that there is no likeness at all betwixt them And
Government Sir Thomas Smith a Country-man of ours in Edward the Sixth's days a good Lawyer and a Statesman one whom you your self will not call a Parricide in the beginning of a Book which he wrote of the Common-wealth of England asserts the same thing and not of our Government only but of almost all others in the world and that out of Aristotle and he says it is not possible that any Government should otherwise subsist But as if you thought it a crime to say any thing and not unsay it again you repeat your former thread-bare Contradictions You say There neither is nor ever was any Nation that did not understand by the very name of a King a person whose authority is inferior to God alone and who is accountable to no other And yet a little after you confess that the name of a King was formerly given to such Powers and Magistrates as had not a full and absolute right of themselves but had a dependance upon the people as the Suffetes among the Carthaginians the Hebrew Judges the Kings of the Lacedemonians and of Arragon Are you not very consistent with your self Then you reckon up five several sorts of Monarchies out of Aristotle in one of which only that Right obtain'd which you say is common to all Kings Concerning which I have said already more than once that neither doth Aristotle give an instance of any such Monarchy nor was there ever any such in being the other four he clearly demonstrates that they were bounded by Establisht Laws and the King's Power subject to those Laws The first of which four was that of the Lacedemonians which in his opinion did of all others best deserve the name of a Kingdom The second was such as obtain'd among Barbarians which was lasting because regulated by Laws and because the people willingly submitted to it whereas by the same Author's opinion in his third Book what King so ever retains the Soveraignty against the people's will is no longer to be accounted a King but a downright Tyrant all which is true likewise of his third sort of Kings which he calls Aesymnete who were chosen by the people and most commonly for a certain time only and for some particular purposes such as the Roman Dictators were The fourth sort he makes of such as reigned in the Heroical days upon whom for their extraordinary merits the people of their own accord conferr'd the Government but yet bounded by Laws nor could these retain the Soveraignty against the will of the people nor do these four sorts of Kingly Governments differ he says from Tyranny in any thing else but only in that these Governments are with the good liking of the people and That against their will The fifth sort of Kingly Government which he calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or absolute Monarchy in which the Supreme Power resides in the King's person which you pretend to be the right of all Kings is utterly condemn'd by the Philosopher as neither for the good of Mankind nor consonant to Justice or Nature unless some people should be content to live under such a Government and withal confer it upon such as excel all others in vertue These things any man may read in the third Book of his Politicks But you I believe that once in your life you might appear witty and florid pleased your self with making a comparison betwixt these five sorts of Kingly Government and the five Zones of the World betwixt the two extremes of Kingly power there are three more temperate Species interposed as there lie three Zones betwixt the Torrid and the Frigid Pretty Rogue what ingenious comparisons he always makes us May you be for ever banished whither you your self condemn an absolute Kingdom to be to wit to the frigid Zone which when you are there will be doubly cold to what it was before In the mean while we shall expect that new fashioned sphere which you describe from you our modern Archimedes in which there shall be two extreme Zones one Torrid and the other Frigid and three temperate ones lying betwixt The Kings of the Lacedaemonians you say might lawfully be Imprisoned but it was not lawful to put them to Death Why not Because the Ministers of Justice and some Foreign Soldiers being surprised at the Novelty of the thing thought it not lawful to lead Agis to his Execution though condem'd to die And the people of Lacedemon were displeased at his death not because condemn'd to die though a King but because he was a good man and popular and had been circumvented by a faction of the great ones Says Plutarch Agis was the first King that was put to death by the Ephori in which words he does not pretend to tell us what lawfully might be done but what actually was done For to imagin that such as may lawfully accuse a King and imprison him may not also lawfully put him to death is a childish conceit At last you betake your self to give an account of the Right of English Kings There never was you say but one King in England This you say because you had said before that unless a King be sole in the Government we cannot be a King Which if it be true some of them who I had thought had been Kings of England were not really so for to omit many of our Saxon Kings who had 〈◊〉 their Sons or their Brothers Partners with them in the Government it is known that King Henry the Second of the Norman Race reign'd together with his Son Let them show say you a President of any Kingdom under the Government of a single person who has not an absolute power though in some Kingdoms more remiss in others more intense Do you show any Power that 's absolute and yet remiss you Ass is not that power that 's absolute the Supreme Power of all How can it then be both supreme and remiss Whatsoever Kings you shall acknowledg to be invested with a remiss or a less power those I will easily make appear to have no absolute power and consequently to be inferior to a People free by nature who is both its own Law given and can make the Regal Power more or less intense or remiss that is greater or less Whether the whole Island of Britain was anciently Governed by Kings or no is uncertain It 's most likely that the form of their Government changed according to the Exigencies of the times Whence Tacitus says The Britains anciently were under Kings now the great man amongst them divide them into Parties and Factions When the Romans left them they were about forty years without Kings they were not always therefore under a Kingly Government as you say they were but when they were so that the Kingdom was Hereditary I positively deny which that it was not is evident both from the Series of their Kings and their way of Creating them for the consent of the people is asked in express words When the
King has taken 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Oath the Archbishop stepping to 〈◊〉 side of the Stage erected for that purpose asks the people four several times in these words Do you consent to have this man to be your King Just as if he spoke to them in the Roman Stile Vultis Jubetis hunc Regnare Is it your pleasure do you appoint this man to Reign Which would be needless if the Kingdom were by the Law hereditary But with Kings Usurpation passes very frequently for Law and Right You go about to ground Charles's Right to the Crown who was so often conquered himself upon the Right of Conquest William surnamed the Conqueror â—orsooth subdued us But they who are not strangers to our History know full well that the Strength of the English Nation was not so broken in that one Fight at Hastings but that they might easily have renewed the War But they chose rather to accept of a King than to be under a Conqueror and a Tyrant They swear therefore to William to be his Liege-men and he swears to them at the Altar to carry to them as a good King ought to do in all respects When he broke his word and the English betook themselves again to their Arms being diffident of his strength he renewed his Oath upon the Holy Evangelists to observe the Ancient Laws of England And therefore if after that he miserably oppressed the English as you say he did he did it not by Right of Conquest but by Right of Perjury Besides it is certain that many ages ago the Conquerors and Conquered coalesced into one and the same people So that that Right of Conquest if any such ever were must needs have been antiquated long ago His own words at his death which I give you out of a French Manuscript written at Cane put all out of doubt I appoint no man says he to inherit the Kingdom of England By which words both his pretended Right of Conquest and the Hereditary Right were disclaim'd at his death and buried together with him I see now that you have gotten a place at Court as I foretold you would you are made the King's Chief Treasurer and Steward of his Court-Craft And what follows you seem to write ex Officio as by virtue of your Office Magnificent Sir If any preceding Kings being thereunto compelled by Factions of Great Men or Seditions amongst the Common People have receded in some measure from their Right that cannot prejudice the Successor but that he is at liberty to resume it You say well if therefore at any time our Ancestors have through neglect lost any thing that was their Right why should that prejudice us their Posterity If they would promise for themselves to become Slaves they could make no such promise for us who shall always retain the same Right of delivering our selves out of Slavery that they had of enslaving themselves to any whomsoever You wonder how it comes to pass that a King of Great Britain must now-adays be looked upon as one of the Magistrates of the Kingdom only whereas in all other Kingly Governments in Christendom Kings are invested with a Free and Absolute Authority For the Scots I remit you to Buchanan For France your own Native Countrey to which you seem to be a stranger to Hottoman's Franco Gallia and Girardus a French Historian for the rest to other Authors of whom none that I know of were Independents Out of whom you might have learned a quite other lesson concerning the Right of Kings than what you teach Not being able to prove that a Tyrannical Power belongs to the Kings of England by Right of Conquest you try now to do it by Right of Perjury Kings profess themselves to Reign By the Grace of God What if they had professed themselves to be gods I believe if they had you might easily have been brought to become one of their Priests So the Archbishops of Canterbury pretended to Archbishop it by Divine Providence Are you such a fool as to deny the Pope's being a King in the Church that you may make the King greater than a Pope in the State But in the Statutes of the Realm the King is called our Lord. You are become of a sudden a wonderful Nomenclator of our Statutes But you know not that many are called Lords and Masters who are not really so You know not how unreasonable a thing it is to judge of Truth and Right by Titles of Honour not to say of Flattery Make the same Inference if you will from the Parliament's being called the King's Parliament for it is called the King's Bridle too or a Bridle to the King and therefore the King is no more Lord or Master of his Parliament than a Horse is of his Bridle But why not the King's Parliament since the King summons them I 'le tell you why because the Consuls used to indict a Meeting of the Senate yet were they not Lords over that Council When the King therefore summons or calls together a Parliament he does it by vertue and in discharge of that Office which he has received from the people that he may advise with them about the weighty affairs of the Kingdom not his own particular Affairs Or when at any time the Parliament debated of the King 's own Affairs if any could properly be called his own they were always the last things they did and it was in their choice when to debate of them and whether at all or no and depended not upon the King's Pleasure And they whom it concerns to know this know very well That Parliaments anciently whether summoned or not might by Law meet twice a Year But the Laws are called too The King's Laws These are flattering ascriptions a King of England can of himself make no Law For he was not constituted to make Laws but to see those Laws kept which the People made And you your self here confess That Parliaments Meet to make Laws Wherefore the Law is also called the Law of the Land and the Peoples Law Whence King Ethelstane in the Preface to his Laws speaking to all the People I have granted you every thing says he by your own Law And in the form of the Oath which the Kings of England used to take before they were made Kings The People stipulate with them thus Will you grant those Just Laws which the People shall chuse The King Answers I will And you are infinitely mistaken in saying That When there is no Parliament sitting the King Governs the whole state of the Kingdom to all intents and purposes by a Regal Power For he can determine nothing of any moment with respect to either Peace or War nor can he put any stop to the Proceedings of the Courts of Justice And the Judges therefore Swear That they will do nothing Judicially but according to Law tho the King by Word or Mâ—…te or Letters under his own Seal should command the contrary Hence it is that the King is often
Will both of Senate and People gets as great a number as he can either of Enemies or profligate Subjects to side with him against the Senate and the People The Parliament therefore allowed the King as they did whatever he had besides the setting up of a Standard not to wage War against his own people but to defend them against such as the Parliament should declare Enemies to the State If he acted otherwise himself was to be accounted an Enemy since according to the very Law of St. Edward or according to a more sacred Law than that the Law of Nature it self he lost the name of a King and was no longer such Whence Cicero in his Philip. He forfeits his Command in the Army and Interest in the Government that employs them against the State Neither could the King compel those that held of him by Knight-Service to serve him in any other War than such as was made by consent of Parliament which is evident by many Statutes So for Customs and other Subsidies for the maintenance of the Navy the King could not exact them without an Act of Parliament as was resolved about twelve years ago by the ablest of our Lawyers when the King's Authority was at the height And long before them Fortescue an Eminent Lawyer and Chancellor to King Henry the 6th The King of England says he can neither alter the Laws nor exact Subsidies without the people's consent nor can any Testimonies be brought from Antiquity to prove the Kingdom of England to have been merely Regal The King says Bracton has a Jurisdiction over all his Subjects that is in his Courts of Justice where Justice is administred in the King's name indeed but according to our own Laws All are subject to the King that is every particular man is and so Bracton explains himself in the places that I have cited What follows is but turning the same stone over and over again at which sport I believe you are able to tire Sisiphus himself and is sufficiently answered by what has been said already For the rest if our Parliaments have sometimes complimented good Kings with submissive expressions tho neither favouring of Flattery nor Slavery those are not to be accounted due to Tyrants nor ought to prejudice the peoples Right good manners and civility do not infringe Liberty Whereas you cite out of Sir Edw. Coke and others That the Kingdom of England is an Absolute Kingdom that is said with respect to any Foreign Prince or the Emperor because as Cambden says It is not under the Patronage of the Emperor but both of them affirm that the Government of England resides not in the King alone but in a Body Politick Whence Fortescue in his Book de laud. leg Angl. cap. 9. The King of England says he governs his people not by a merely Regal but a Political power for the English are govern'd by Laws of their own making Foreign Authors were not ignorant of this Hence Philip de Comines a Grave Author in the Fifth Book of his Commentaries Of all the Kingdoms of the earth says he that I have any knowledge of there is none in my opinion where the Government is more moderate where the King has less power of hurting his people than in England Finally 'T is ridiculous say you for them to affirm that Kingdoms were ancienter than Kings which is as much as if they should say that there was Light before the Sun was created But with your good leave Sir we do not say that Kingdoms but that the people were before Kings In the mean time who can be more ridiculous than you who deny there was Light before the Sun had a being You pretend to a curiosity in other mens matters and have forgot the very first things that were taught you You wonder how they that have seen the King upon his Throne at a Session of Parliament sub aureo serico Coelo under a golden and silken Heaven under a Canopy of State should so much as make a question whether the Majesty resided in him or in the Parliament They are certainly hard of belief whom so lucid an Argument coming down from Heaven cannot convince Which Golden Heaven you like a Stoick have so devoutly and seriously gaz'd upon that you seem to have forgot what kind of Heaven Moses and Aristotle describe to us for you deny that there was any Light in Moses his Heaven before the Sun and in Aristotle's you make three temperate Zones How many Zones you observed in that Golden and Silken Heaven of the King 's I know not but I know you got one Zone a Purse well tempered with a Hundred Golden Stars by your Astronomy CHAP. X. SInce this whole Controversie whether concerning the Right of Kings in general or that of the King of England in particular is rendred difficult and intricate rather by the obstinacy of parties than by the nature of the thing it self I hope they that prefer Truth before the Interest of a Faction will be satisfied with what I have alledged out of the Law of God the Law of Nations and the Municipal Laws of my own Countrey That a King of England may be brought to Tryal and put to Death As for those whose minds are either blinded with Superstition or so dazeled with the Splendor and Grandure of a Court that Magnanimity and true Liberty do not appear so glorious to them as they are in themselves it will be in vain to contend with them either by Reason and Arguments or Examples But you Salmasius seem very absurd as in every other part of your Book so particularly in this who tho you â—ail perpetually at the Independents and revile them with all the terms of Reproach imaginable yet assert to the highest degree that can be the Independâ—ncy of the King whom you defend and will not allow him to owe his Soveraignty to the people but to his Descent And whereas in the beginning of your Book you complain'd that he was put to plead for his Life here yâ—u complain That he perish'd without being heard to spâ—… for himself But if you have a mind to look into the History of his Trial which is very faithfully publish'd in French it may be you 'l be of another opinion Whereas he had liberty given him for some day together to say what he could for himself he made use of it not to clear himself of the Crimes 〈◊〉 to his Charge but to disprove the Authority oâ— his Judges and the Judicature that he was called before And whenever a Criminal is either mute or says nothing to the purpose there is no Injustice in condemning him without hearing him if his Crimes are notorious and publickly known If you say that Charles dyed as he lived I agree with you If you say that he died piously holily and at ease you may remember that his Grandmother Mary Queen of Scots and infamous Woman dyed on a Scaffold with as much outward appearance of
our Northern Counties and kept Garisons in the best Towns of those Parts and had the King himself in Custody whilest they likewise encouraged the tumultuating of those of their own Faction who did more than threaten the Parliament both in City and Country and through whose means not only a Civil but a War with Scotland too shortly after brake out If it has been always accounted praise-worthy in private Men to assist the State and promote the publick Good whether by Advice or Action our Army sure was in no fault who being ordered by the Parliament to come to Town obey'd and came and when they were come quell'd with ease the Faction and Uproar of the King's Party who sometimes threatned the House it self For things were brought to that pass that of necessity either we must be run down by them or they by us They had on their side most of the Shopkeepers and Handicrafts-men of London and generally those of the Ministers that were most factious On our side was the Army whose Fidelity Moderation and Courage were sufficiently known It being in our Power by their means to retain our Liberty our State our Common-safty do you think we had not been fools to have lost all by our negligence and folly They who had had places of Command in the Kings Army after their Party were subdued had laid down their Arms indeed against their Wills but continued Enemies to us in their hearts and they flock'd to Town and were here watching all opportunities of renewing the War With these Men tho they were the greatest Enemies they had in the World and thirsted after their Blood did the Presbyterians because they were not permitted to exercise a Civil as well as an Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction over all others hold secret Correspondence and took measures very unworthy of what they had formerly both said and done and they came to that Spleen at last that they would rather enthral themselves to the King again than admit their own Brethren to share in their Liberty which they likewise had purchased at the price of their own Blood they chose rather to be Lorded over once more by a Tyrant polluted with the Blood of so many of his own Subjects and who was enraged and breath'd out nothing but revenge against those of them that were left than endure their Brethren and Friends to be upon the square with them The Independents as they are called were the only men that from first to last kept to their point and knew what use to make of their Victory They refus'd and wisely in my opinion to make him King again being then an Enemy who when he was their King had made himself their Enemy Nor were they ever the less averse to a Peace but they very prudently dreaded a new War or a perpetual slavery under the name of a Peace To 〈◊〉 our Army with the more reproaches you begin a silly confused Narrative of our Affairs in which tho I find many things false many things frivolous many things laid to our charge for which we rather merit yet I think it will be to no purpose for me to write a true relation in answer to your false one For you and I are arguing not writing Histories and both sides will believe our reasons but not our narrative and indeed the nature of the things themselves is such that they cannot be related as they ought to be but in a set History so that I think it better as Salust said of Carthage Rather to say nothing at all than to say but a little of things of this weight and importance Nay and I scorn so much as to mention the praises of great men and of Almighty God himself who in so wonderful a course of Affairs ought to be frequently acknowledged amongst your Slanders and Reproaches I 'le therefore only pick out such things as seem to have any colour of argument You say the English and Scotch promised by a Solemn Covenant to preserve the Majesty of the King But you omit upon what terms they promised it to wit if it might consist with the safety of their Religion and their Liberty To both which Religion and Liberty that King was so averse to his last breath and watcht all opportunities of gaining advantages upon them that it was evident that his life was dangerous to their Religion and the certain ruin of their Liberty But then you fall upon the King's Judges again If we consider the thing aright the conclusion of this abominable action must be imputed to the Independents yet so as the Presbyterians may justly challenge the glory of its beginning and progress Hark ye Presbyterians what good has it done you how is your Innocence and Loyalty the more cleared by your seeming so much to abhor the putting the King to death You your selves in the opinion of this everlasting talkative Advocate of the King your accuser went more than half-way towards it you were seen acting the fourth Act and more in this Tragedy you may justly be charged with the King's death since you ban'd the way to it 't was you and only you that laid his head upon the Block Wo be to you in the first place if ever Charles his Posterity recover the Crown of England assure your selves you are like to be put in the Black List But pay your Vows to God and love your Brethren who have delivered you who have prevented that calamity from falling upon you who have saved you from inevitable ruin tho against your own wills You are accused likewise for that some years ago you endeavoured by sundry Petitions to lessen the Kings authority that you publisht some scandalous expressions of the King himself in the Papers you presented him with in the name of the Parliament to wit in that Declaration of the Lords and Commons of the 26th of May 1642 you declar'd openly in some mad Positions that breath'd nothing but Rebellion what your thoughts were of the King's authority Hotham by order of Parliament shut the Gates of Hull against the King you had a mind to make a trial by this first act of Rebellion how much the King would bear What could this man say more if it were his design to reconcile the minds of all English men to one another and alienate them wholly from the King for he gives them here to understand that if ever the King be brought back they must not only expect to be punisht for his Father's death but for the Petitions they made long ago and some acts that past in full Parliament concerning the putting down the Common-Prayer and Bishops and that of the Triennial Parliament and several other things that were Enacted with the greatest consent and applause of all the people that could be all which will be look'd upon as the Seditions and mad Positions of the Presbyterians But this vain fellow changes his mind all of a sudden and what but of late when he considered it aright
he thought was to be imputed wholly to the Presbyterians now that he considers the same thing from first to last he thinks the Independents were the sole Actors of it But even now he told us The Presbyterians took up Arms against the King that by them he was beaten taken captive and put in prison Now he says this whole Doctrine of Rebellion is the Independents Principle O! the faithfulness of this man's Narrative How consistent he is with himself What need is there of a Counter narrative to this of his that cuts its own throat But if any man should question whether you are an honest man or a Knave let him read these following lines of yours It is time to explain whence and at what time this Sect of Enemies to Kingship first began VVhy truly these rare Puritans began in Queen Elizabeths time to crawl out of Hell and disturb not only the Church but the State likewise for they are no less plagues to the latter than to the former Now your very speech bewrays you to be a right Balaam for where you designed to spit out the most bitter poyson you could there unwittingly and against your will you have pronounc'd a blessing For it 's notoriously known all over England that if any endeavoured to follow the example of those Churches whether in France or Germany which they accounted best Reformed and to exercise the publick Worship of God in a more pure manner which our Bishops had almost universally corrupted with their Ceremonies and Superstitions or if any seemed either in point of Religion or Morality to be better than others such â—…sons were by the Favourers of Episcopacy termed â—…ans These are they whose Principles you say are so opposite to Kingship Nor are they the only persons most of the Reformed Religion that have not sucked in the rest of their principles yet seem to have approved of those that strike at Kingly Government So that â—hile you inveigh bitterly against the Independents and endeavour to separate them from Christ's flock with the same breath you praise them and those Principles which almost every where you affirm to be peculiar to the Independents here you confess they have been approved of by most of the Reformed Religion Nay you are arrived to that degree of impudence impiety and apostacy that though formerly you maintained that Bishops ought to be extirpated out of the Church Root and Branch as so many pests and limbs of Antichrist here you say the King ought to protect them for the saving of his Coronation-Oath You cannot show your self a more infamous Villain than you have done already but by abjuring the Protestant Reformed Religion to which you are a scandal Whereas you tax us with giving a Toleration of all Sects and Heresies you ought not to find fault with us for that since the Church bears with such a prosâ—igate wretch as you your self such a vain fellow such a lyar such a Mercenary Slanderer such an Apostate one who has the impudence to affirm That the best and most pious of Christians and even most of those who profess the Reformed Religion are crept out of Hell because they differ in opinion from you I had best pass by the Calumnies that fill up the rest of this Chapter and those prodigious tenents that you ascribe to the Independents to render them odious for neither do they at-all concern the cause you have in hand and they are such for the most part as deserve to be laugh'd at and despised rather than receive a serious Answer CHAP. XI YOu seem to begin this Eleventh Chapter Salmasius though with no modesty yet with some sense of your weakness and trifling in this Discourse For whereas you proposed to your self to enquire in this place by what authority sentence was given against the King You add immediately which no body expected from you that 't is in vain to make any such enquiry to wit because the quality of the persons that did it leaves hardly any room for such a question And therefore as you have been found guilty of a great deal of Impupence and Sauciness in the undertaking of this Cause so since you seem here conscious of your own impertinence I shall give you the shorter answer To your question then by what authority the House of Commons either condemn'd the King themselves or delegated that power to others I answer they did it by vertue of the Supreme authority on earth How they come to have the Supreme Power you may learn by what I have said already when I refuted your Impertinencies upon that Subject If you believed your self that you could ever say enough upon any Subject you would not be so tedious in repeating the same things so many times over And the House of Commons might delegate their Judicial Power by the same reason by which you say the King may delegate his who received all he had from the people Hence in that Solemn League and Covenant that you object to us the Parliaments of England and Scotland solemnly protest and engage to each other to punish the Traytors in such manner as the Supreme Judicial Authority in both Nations or such as should have a Delegate power from them should think fit Here you hear the Parliaments of both Nations protest with one voice that they may Delegate their Judicial Power which they call the Supreme so that you move a vain and frivolous Controversie about Delegating this power But say you there were added to those Judges that were made choice of out of the House of Commons some Officers of the Army and that never was known that Soldiers had any right to try a Subject for his life I 'le silence you in a very few words You may remember that we are not now discoursing of a Subject but of an Enemy whom if a General of an Army after he has taken him Prisoner resolves to dispatch would he be thought to proceed otherwise than according to custom and Martial Law if he himself with some of his Officers should sit upon him and try and cendemn him An enemy to a State made a Prisouer of War cannot be lookt upon to be so much as a Member much less a King in that State This is declar'd by that Sacred Law of St. Edward which denies that a bad King is a King at all or ought to be called so Whereas you say it was not the whole but a part of the House of Comâ—â—ons that try'd and condemned the King I give you this answer The number of them who gave their Votes for putting the King to death was far greater than is necessary according to the custom of our Parliaments to transact the greatest Affairs of the Kingdom in the absence of the rest who since they were absent through their own fault for to revolt to the common enemy in their hearts is the worst sort of absence their absence ought not to hinder the rest who continued faithful to the
assistance I have finished the Work I undertook to wit the defence of the Noble Actions of my Country-men at home and abroad against the raging and envious madness of this distracted Sophister and the asserting of the common Rights of the People against the unjust domination of Kings not out of any hatred to Kings but Tyrants Nor have I wittingly left unanswered any one argument alledged by my adversary nor any one example or authority quoted by him that seem'd to have any force in it or the least colour of an argument Perhaps I have been guilty rather of the other extreme of replying to some of his fooleries and trifles as if they were solid arguments and thereby may seem to have attributed more to them than they deserved One thing yet remains to be done which perhaps is of the greatest concern of all and that is That you my Country-men refute this adversary of yours your selves which I do not see any other means of your effecting than by a constant endeavour to out-do all men's bad words by your own good deeds When you laboured under more sorts of oppression than one you betook your selves to God for refuge and he was graciously pleased to hear your most earnest Prayers and Desires He has gloriously delivered you the first of Nations from the two greatest mischiefs of this life and most pernicious to Vertue Tyranny and Superstition he has endued you with greatness of mind to be first of mankind who after having conquered their own King and having had him delivered into their hands have not scrupled to condemn him Judicially and pursuant to that Sentence of Condemnation to put him to death After the performing so Glorious an Action as this you ought to do nothing that 's mean and little not so much as to think of much less to do any thing but what is great and sublime Which to attain to this is your only way As you have subdued your Enemies in Field so to make appear that unarmed and in the highest outward peace and tranquility you of all mankind are best able to subdue Ambition Avarice the love of Riches and can best avoid the corruptions that Prosperity is apt to introduce which generally subdue and triumph over other Nations to show as great Justice Temperance and Moderation in the maintaining your Liberty as you have shown courage in freeing your selves from slavery These are the only Arguments by which you will be able to evince that you are not such persons as this fellow represents you Traytors Robbers Murderers Parâ—icides Mad-men that you did not put your King to death out of any ambitious design or a desire of invading the Rights of others not out of any seditious Principles or sinister ends that it was not an act of fury or madness but that it was wholly out of love to your Liberty your Religion to Justice Vertue and your Countrey that you punished a Tyrant But if it should fall out otherwise which God forbid if as you have been valiant in War you should grow debauch'd in Peace you that have had such visible demonstrations of the Goodness of God to your selves and his Wrath against your Enemies and that you should not have learned by so eminent so remarkable an example before your eyes to fear God and work Righteousness for my part I shall easily grant and confess for I cannot deny it whatever ill men may speak or think of you to be very true And you will find in a little time That God's Displeasure against you will be greater thâ—n it has yet been against your Adversaries greater than his Grace and Favour has been to your selves which you have had larger experience of than any other Nation under Heaven FINIS * Lupus in Latin signifies a Wolf ☞ St. Lou in Latin Sanctus Lupus Saint Wolf is the name of a place in France where Salmasius had some small Estate and was called so from St. Lupus a German Bishop who with St. German came over into England Anno Dom. 429.
from all humane Jurisdiction and reserved them to his own Tribunal only Let us now consider whether the Gospel preach up any such Doctrine and enjoyn that blind obedience which the Law was so far from doing that it commanded the contrary let us consider whether or no the Gospel that Heavenly Promulgation as it were of Christian Liberty reduce us to a condition of Slavery to Kings and Tyrants from whose imâ—… rule even the old Law that Mistress of Slavery 〈…〉 the people of God when it obtained Your â—…ent you take from the person of Christ himself But alas who does not know that he put 〈◊〉 into the condition not of a private person only but even of a servant that we might be made free Nor is this to be understood of some internal spiritual liberty only how inconsistent else would that Song of his Mothers be with the design of his coming into the world He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their heart he hath put down the mighty from their seat and hath exalted the humble and meek How ill suited to their occasion would these expressions be if the coming of Christ rather established and strengthened a Tyrannical Government and made a blind subjection the duty of all Christians Himself having been born and lived and died under a Tyrannical Government has thereby purchased Liberty for us As he gives us his Grace to submit patiently to a condition of Slavery if there be a necessity of it so if by any honest ways and means we can rid our selves and obtain our Liberty he is so far from restraining us that he encourageth us so to do Hence it is that St. Paul not only of an Evangelical but a Civil Liberty says thus 1 Cor. 7. 21. Art thou called being a servant care not for it but if thou maist be made free use it rather you are bought with a price be not ye servants of men So that you are very impertinent in endeavouring to argue us into Slavery by the example of our Saviour who by submitting to such a condition himself has confirmed even our Civil Liberties He took upon him indeed in our stead the form of a servant but he always retained his purpose of being a deliverer and thence it was that he taught us a quite other notion of the right of Kings than this that you endeavour to make good You I say that preach up not Kingship but Tyranny and that in a Commonwealth by enjoyning not a necessary only but a Religious subjection to whatever Tyrant gets into the Chair whether he come to it by Succession or by Conquest or chance or any how And now He turn your own weapons against you and oppose you as 〈◊〉 to do with your own Authorities When the Collectors of the Tribute-money came to Christ for Tribute in Galilee he asked Peter Mat. 17. Of whom the Kings of the earth took custom or tribute of their own â—…dren or of strangers Peter saith unto him Of strangers 〈◊〉 saith unto him then are the children free notwithstanding lest we should offend them c give unto them for thee and for me Expositors differ upon this place whom â—â—is Tribute was paid to some say it was 〈◊〉 to the Priests for the use of the Sanctuary others that it was paid to the Emperour I am of opinion that it was the Revenue of the Sanctuary but paid to Herad who perverted the Institution of it and took it to himself Josephus mentions divers sorts of Tribute which he and his Sons exacted all which Aâ—…ppa afterwards remitted And this very Tribute though small in it self yet being accompanied with many more was a heavy burden the Jews even the poorest of them in the time of their Commonwealth paid a 〈◊〉 so that it was some considerable oppression that our Saviour spoke of and from hence he took occasion to Tax Herod's Injustice under whose Government and within whose Jurisdiction he then was in that whereas the Kings of the Earth who aâ—…ct usually the Title of Fathers of their Country do not use to oppress their own Children that is their own natural born Subjects with heavy and unreasonable Exactions but lay such burdens upon strangers and conquer'd enemies he quite contrary opprâ—ssed not strangers but his own people But let what will be here meant by Children either natural born Subjects or the Children of God and those the Elect only or Christians in general as St. Augustine understands the place this is certain that if Peter was a child and therefore free then by consequence we are so too by our Saviour's own Testimony either as Englishmen or as Christans and that consequently it is not the right of Kings to exact heavy Tributes from their own Countrymen and those freeborn Subjects Christ himself professeth that he paid not this Tribute as a thing that was due but that he might not bring trouble upon himself by offending those that demanded it The work that he came into this World to do was quite of another Nature But if our Saviour deny that it is the Right of Kings to burden their Free-born Subjects with grievous Exactions he would certainly muchless allow it to be their Right to Spoil Massacre and Torture their own Country-men and those Christians too He discoursed after such a manner of the Right of Kings that those that he spoke to suspected his Principles as laying too great a restraint upon Sovereignty and not allowing the License that Tyrants assume to themselves to be the Rights of Kings It was not for nothing that the Pharisees put such Questions to him tempting him and that at the same time they told him that he regarded not the Person of any Man nor was it for nothing that he was angry when such Questions were proposed to him Matth. 22. If one should endeavour to ensuare you with little Questions and catch at your Answers to ground an Accusation against you upon your own Principles concerning the Right of Kings and all this under a Monarchy would you be angry with him You 'd have but very little reason 'T is evident That our Saviours Principles concerning Government were not agreeable to the Hamour of Princes His Answer too implies as much by which he rather turn'd them away than instructed them He asked for the Tribute-money Whose Image and Superscription is it says he They tell him it was Caesar's Give then to Caesar says he the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's And how comes it to pass that the People should not have given to them the things that are theirs Render to all men their dues says St. Paul Rom. 13. So that Caesar must not ingross all to himself Our Liberty is not Caesar's 't is a Blessing we have received from God himself 't is what we are born to to lay this down at Caesar's feet which we derive not from him which we are not beholden to him for were an unworthy Action and