was customary with the Jews to pray for the King which being practicall in Gods Worship was more then Precept Against thee thee only have I sinned Psal 51.4 That is None to judg the Kings sin but God He might be evil but the offence was only to God The offence respected the Judg of it which is God only Curse not the King no not in thy thought Eccl. 10. ver 20. This not thinking is a restraint of all evill since all evill is a first thinking evill so as this is an universal prohibition My Son fear thou the Lord and the King and meddle not with the seditious for their destruction shall rise suddenly Prov. 24. ver 21. This proves the natural dependency of it The fear of the King on the fear of God then it goes to the reason of it fear the King not to rebel against him I will conclude it with that of David cautionary to his own Soul Who can lay his hand on the Lords Annointed and be guiltless 1 Sam. 26. ver 9. A full definitive sentence in the Case that no violence can be offered to a Kings person And that this was general to all Kings see the consent of all Scriptures Let every Soul be subject to the Higher Powers for there is no Power but of God and the Powers that be are ordained of God and whosoever resisteth the Power resisteth the Ordinance of God and they that resist receive to themselves damnation Rom. 13. Now that all these Powers doth properly intend a King the words following are For Princes are not to be feared for good works but for evill And then after in the singular number He is the Minister of God and he beareth not the Sword for nought Now this Text as it makes subjection absolute so it takes away all parity of Powers it intends one Supream And Powers in the nature of it is but one Power for all subordinate Powers flow out of it and refer to it 1 Tim. 2. Exhort therefore that first of all Supplications Prayers intercessions and giving of thanks be made for all men for Kings and all that are in Authority that we may live a peaceable life in all Godlinesse and honesty for that is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour This present Emperour was a Tyrant Claudius Nero which stops all objection from the Kings mis-using his Authority it looks to the good of Government in general and to the evil in general of resisting to Government 1 Pet. 2.13 Submit your selves to every Ordinance of man for the Lords sake whether unto Kings as Supream or unto Governors as unto them that are sent of him Here all Government is included in the King sent of him that is out of him and acts by him And submission to Government here is made essential to Godliness 1 Pet. 2.17 Fear God Honour the King Making them connaturals and that the fear of God cannot consist with dishonouring the King the word Honour includes all subjection in it Having taken forth these Scriptures thus clearly and considered all the united force of them for preservation of Kings and for all Allegiance and fidelity to them I reason thus as to Mr. Baxter and his Case that the very force of Scripture and Word of God will not permit any such thing to be as a lawfulness of killing or judging a King or that possibly Law or Authority amongst men should be repugnant to the voice of God being general and universal for obedience to Kings and not to offer violence to them To acknowledg as he needs must that the Scripture commands such things of Kings But we have a Parliament a thing made out of the people that may lawfully condemn and execute the King This is a meer contradiction to God himself no pretence of man can dissolve the universal Will of God declared without exception for a King he is and no distinction can frustrate the will and command of God for so it should be subject to a lye if it should come under man And then to consider that truths stated in Moral duties never lose their natures but are ever the same And now I am loath yet to part with these Scriptures till I have made a full claim to the sense of them howsoever Mr. Baxter deal with them afterwards Let every Soul be subject c. which is to the King which I have proved and the Text shews it Is it not exclusive of any power to be against the King Every Soul the word hath a strange emphasis in it every Soul that is bringing it to a singularity and nearest distinction of man by his Soul which is most himself and wherein he acts his subjection and so precisely and individually every containing all Then to fear the Lord and the King that is both as one the condition of the one implying the other Then forbidding to joyn with seditious or such as are given to Change which directly points out Rebellion And then the case of very Tyrants commanding supplications to God for them shewing directly the nature of Supream Governours to be born by the people whatsoever their condition be And then setting forth all Government of subordinates to be but the Kings Government virtually in him nothing of themselves perse And then Curse not the King admit not an evil thought of him pray for him still so many steps to his preservation keeping all harm or hurt far off him must needs intend the greatest of not destroying him Then to call them Gods an exemption from all humane Tribunalls above the condition of mankind subject to God onely as Supream Governours cannot in nature be other and then generally submission to them for the Lords sake that is to say Gods Service included in it Now if out of all this we cannot make a construction that Kings ought not to be destroyed by the People or by any sort or calling of them under any Form Guise or pretence whatsoever then nothing can be conclusive to man If after all this there be any thing for Mr. Baxter to pretend to and not utterly give up his cause he must make the King of England to be such a thing as not to be within the intendment of these Scriptures Not a King not a Supream Governour not so qualified or to be so obeyed or acknowledged a thing meerly nominal and conditional under some other Supremacy and subject to a forfeiture of himself That this was so at his beginning and admitting that time and succession hath given him no other right since that all this proves it self so to be That the Parliamentary was the onely Primary right and only natural and National and Kings their Servants and Trustees and accomptable And that the Government so began when no King was and his being still under a condition and the condition no less then to be subject to a lawful destroying Power If all this were which is as far from truth
the highest Judge of the safety or danger of the Re-publick and that it is Treason against the Common-wealth and as Politicians say against the Majestas realis to rise against them Answ Mr. Baxter hath of this in several places the Parliament's Supremacy it is his Goliath I shall answer generally to it at once Now the Arguments may be many I will make it but a Passage not a serious Debate and give but hints of truths that may be enlarged The first is that I am sure though I was not of that time that Kings were when Parliaments were not and then must be granted absolute the other not in being We cannot suppose here in England any time of Government without Kings and the Kings themselvs thought it best to convene the People to draw thereby aids of the Publick by publick consent and likewise to have all Counsels and all Grievances in common to be common in helps and means which is strongest and peradventure to ballance the Loâ—ds by this popular Power Whatsoever the ends were in it or the use to be made of it or accidents that grew out of it it shews it was a Creature mearly of the King's Will and creating and therefore cannot be intended but to act under him and to his help as the end of its Being So being called by the King in this sense they bear in them the Peoples Rights whatsoever was left in the People to be disposed of by their own consent Their Power therefore must hold proportion with that that is only in the quality of the People as to complain of Grievances and petition Redresses to give their private to the Publick and to consent to alter Fundamentals as there shall be cause all which are the natural Rights of the People and common consent is required to them Now this does not reach at all to Mr. Baxter's sense of sharing with the King in Supremacy and Power and right of governing nothing at all of it All Parliament rights have their station below governing it is by accident when they meddle with the Government as about the causes that require their help And all great and outward relations and inward may be Objects of this great Body of the People as their help is required but this with that caution as the King puts them on and takes them off So jealous a thing is Soveraignty it self And it is a nice distinction to make them Judges of the necessity and not to judge of the cause of the necessity and therefore involve themselvs sometimes in it too far and the retreats have been difficult No doubt this must needs be a strange great considerable Power in the consequence of it that which all the rest moves by and is the matter or means of the Government But this does not alter the Nature of it It is a most noble Constitution because it begets treatment betwixt Prince and People and there is a correspondency betwixt the giving of the one and the retribution of the other but when either make too much use of their Power it destroys the order and the inconvenience is so intolerable to the Nation as they are brought again to it and must correspond Now nothing preservs so much as when things keep to their Natures The good of Parliaments does consist within their own rights and not to enter into the King's for then it breaks the Parliament or the Parliament breaks the Government To return to the nature of the Objection of co-ordinate Power of Parliaments The Parliament is a Creation that comes out of the King's Will and Power nothing of Power to beget it self and therefore cannot be understood to serve to another end against that which was its cause and which it self had absolute Being without it Never to this day they have Power to their own Being but at the King's Will a meer Entity first in the King's Will before it can have any in them so as they are meerly Creatures having their Creation from another's Will and so to determine them after they are in being which shews the most absolute depending on another Power that possibly can be Hence rationally and consequently of this it must be that the end is of the Agent and Author and not to be their own end that did not nor could not move to their own Being so as meerly it follows A Parliament is the King's business because it flows out of his Will And some Acts have been made by consent of Kings for certainty of Parliaments but have not bound Kings for we see they have been discontinued many years together So certain it is that Regal Right cannot be restrained Now the King 's good and the People's are so necessarily conjoyned as it cannot be supposed they can serve the King but it must conserve the Kingdom and all the People And hence flows all publick considerations and conclusions the whole Interest of the Nation resolves it self into it and all the Powers submit to it because all parties are in it by convention or representation and the King can make lawful whatsoever they can consent to But without the King they are a meer inanimate Body and can act nothing they are as the Womb or Matrix the King is the generative Masculine part that gives life and production and actuates and forms their conceptions And the difference not rightly conceived begets the mistake confounding their Power with that of ordinary standing Courts which act by the King's Power invested in them which he cannot with-draw or deny to and this of Parliaments which is extraordinary and by the King's consent And then too their work is about the generality not to do with the ordinary proceedings of Law proper to other Courts but only the abuse of them The Author of the History of Independency affirms pag. 35. History of Independency 35. that the judicial Power of the House of Lords is by the King 's special Authority his Argument upon it is The King makes them Admiministrators and interpreters of his Laws but he never trusts any but himself with the Power of pardoning and dispensing with the rigour of the Law in Criminal cases And though the Lord Keeper is Speaker of the Lord's House of course yet he is no Member of the Lord's House virtute Officii The Judges are not Members but Assistants only so that no man in the House of Peers as he is simply a Peer is trusted by the King either by dispensation of Law or Equity When a Peer of Parliament or any man else is tryed before the Lords in Parliament criminally he cannot be tried by his Peers only because in acts of Judicature there must be a Judge Superior who must have his Inferiors ministerial to him Therefore in the Trial of the Earl of Strafford as in all other Trials upon Life and Death in the Lord's House the King grants his Commission to a Lord High Steward to sit as Judge and the rest of the Lords are but in
deceived and abused to serve to others ends Object That they openly professed to manage their War for King and Parliament not against his Person and Authority but against Delinquents that were fled from Justice and against evil Councellers Answ Mr. Baxter would make their War just That it was professed and engaged to be managed for King and Parliament Certainly they did no more in this then all Subjects ever did that made War against their King that is to disstinguish the King's interest from the cause of the War A less pretension cannot be for a Rebellion Rebellion in the nature of it is so much a Monster as it seeks the best cover and never has the face to pretend against the King The fallaciousnesse of this he himself evinced in his following by saying or at least concluding That a subdued King is never fit again to rule over the People that subdued him We need no other evidence now then the things themselves so as we are to argue à posteriori from the ends and issues back to their causes that is that all War taken up by Subjects upon any pretence whatsoever or by whatsoever caution or limitation evermore in the nature of it intends the destroying of King and Kingdom Object That the two Nations of England and Scotland did in the midst of the Wars swear in the Solemn League and Covenant to be true to the King Answ Still this was but the same thing to strengthen the confederacy when at any time there should be a fainting or scrupling by the People a new engagement or profession to publick ends and to common preservation whereof the King was the Head would give new life to it And this was all the use that ever was made of that Covenant It never served the King at all but to beat him down and destroy him And all bringing the people into a body by Covenant is unlawful because Government meerly consists in having no contracts of the people acting of themselves And likewise the Covenant was not absolute as a Kings preservation should be but had a loose in it that made it nothing It was with a so far as consists with Religion Laws and Liberties The King's life and his Rights were not absolutely covenanted O God forbid there should not be an exception as to Religion Laws and Liberties and this a destroying power would be interpreter of So as this Covenant was like Nebuchadnezzar's Image the upper parts of Gold and Silver the lower parts of Iron and baser stuff but the truth is when men Covenant things contradictory as to fight against the King and to be true to him they cannot be expected to perform better for truth is of that Nature that though men abuse it ever so much yet it is unalterable Effects are certain to their causes and own their true Parents Object The Committees Commanders Ministers and People thorowout the Land professed openly to go only upon such tearms as managing but a defensive War against the King's miscariages but an offensive against delinquent Subjects Answ There is no such thing in Nature as a defensive War against a King by Subjects as I shall more clearly demonstrate in due place But in this Mr. Baxter grants as far as is possible to make it defensive necessary and of meer necessity on the King's part It was offensive against delinquent Subjects as much as to say it was a War on the Parliaments part to the destruction of the King's Subjects and the King must be unconcern'd in it sit by and be idle with-draw all protection and become immediately out of possession For such is the Nature and being of a King when an armed power is acting and the King sedentary and not resisting In a Kingdom a War cannot be against any party and not against the King for it deprives the King of his governing power Consider but what the Nature of a War taken up by the People is for his Senate signifies nothing he shall find the whole is but King and People First when it once becomes powerful it gains from its very unlawfulnesse a liberty to be governed by none for in unlawful actions they are all equals No obligation can arise but where there is a primary justice to fix it to and we see in this every thing that prevails never disputes right and the reason is because the whole is unlawful And I present this to Mr. Baxter's reason as it is visible to his observation to shew him that such a kind of War can be wicked but cannot find a Justice to govern it and his first of rebelling with caution and condition was a meer fiction His next is a Narrative only Object In that it was known that the Army was quite altered not only by a new modelling but by an intestine Jesuitical corrupting of multitudes of Souldiers before this odious Fact could be done And it was known that the corrupted part of the Army though the fewer did so excel the rest in Industry and Activity that thereby they hindred their Opposition And it is known that the Jesuited party that afterwards so many of them turned Levellers did draw unto them the Anabaptists Libertines and other Sects upon a Conjunction of Interests and by many sly pretences especially tying all together by the predicated Liberty for all Religions And yet after this the World knows they were fain before they could accomplish it to master the City of London to master the Parliament to imprison and cast out the Members and to retain but a few that were partly of their mind and partly seduced or over-awed by them to joyn with them in the work Answ It is incident alwayes that when a King's Power is dissolved all Wickedness and all manner of Factions and Divisions do grow up in the place of it for want of that Power to retain them and their own guilt still driving them on and being all equals in wickedness these are so natural Causes as I wonder any one can dispute them They ly all in the first Cause of taking away the King's Power all the rest results out of it And they themselvs had proceeded so far as to all Deprivations of the King and all manner of Imputations and Proscriptions as guilty of all the evill of the War setling him in the condition of a Traytor being King kept him in custody after they had bought him of the Scots and not enduring him to terms till the last when it was too late I grant his party would not have had the King bin killed A poor reserve when he is made incapable of any other condition If the People did but know what it were to subdue their King and deprive him of his Power they would never dispute terms of disposing him It is the same thing as killing it stays but the acting And this servs to all he says of this kind And let me insert this though I consent wholly to his Narrative that it is very ordinary and
of the King the Fountain in opposition to the King it is but an opacous Body the light withdrawn from it Grotius states the case Grotius de jure Villi 54. inventi sunt nostro seculo whether Subordinates may act against the Supream Power that is whether any sort of Magistracy under a King have any quality or consideration in them as dividing from the King and he resolves it in the Negative He reasons it thus that these publick Persons are but private in respect of the chief and all the faculty of governing in them is so subjected to the chief Power as whatsoever they act against the Will of that is defective of the faculty and is but of the Nature of a private Act. I shall give it off here because hereafter I shall demonstrate the impossibility of two Soveraignties or Supremacies in one Government and reduce Parliamentary Rights to their due Qualification Now then take away this the other falls this the Theatre Mr. Baxter erects for judging the King and Scaffold for beheading him The truth is the Laws are all silent about this Question Whether a Parliament may commit Tteason so as if we shall not take them in their general understanding we have no law in this Case It is a thing not to be doubted that the Law never had it in imagination that there was any exception to the committing of Treason so as no such thing mentioned in Laws nor ever entred into the mind of any Commentator who write at large and many times their own conceipts yet it never came into the conceipt of any Person to except a Parliament for committing Treason It is many times in Nature the strongest Law that which is not mentioned because the case never imagined to be and therefore not provided for So as if Mr. Baxter will not take all the Laws that are generall without exception to include all Persons then is the King without Law as against a Parliament All the sense of the Laws respect the King without any consideration of Persons no sense or intendment of that but only the end to which it is directed and therefore it is called Crimen laesae Majestatis which shews where the end is in the King's Preservation but the means never differenced in respect of any It were in vain to enumerate the Laws and to aggravate them all dread and all saving being to the life of the Government the King This differencing is out of all Laws never thought of it had its Law and Execution at once as Treasons are never owned till they are acted But let the Reader consider upon the Statute 25 Edw. 3. which is the Declarative of Treasons whether there is discernable any differencing in it or exceptions of Persons or Callings or of qualities or any imagination of this Proposition till now that wickedness strives to defend it self I shall take occasion here to speak to former actings of Parliaments upon Kings deposing them and consequently killing them because the Nature of man is to think any thing that hath bin done may be done and so never finds end of wickedness but to make it infinite Any extraordinary or transcendent acting upon Government though never so unlawful and violent yet if it become powerful it commonly creates something to others to derive from it as those Persons whom Mr. Baxter would vindicate long before they divided declared That in case they should act to the highest Presidents they should not fail in duty or trust having their eye and aim upon the deposing of Kings Ed. 2. Rich. 2. And the last Actors that compleated the Tragedy conclude power of Parliaments from former destroying Kings and setting up others I shall produce it only into some considerations by Epitome only leaving the large Subject of it to the Histories how those Princes came to be declined and lose their Power The first Edw. 2. his condition was to be Prisoner to his own Queen and his Son a Prince of fourteen years of Age and the implacable hatred of the Queen and her party was such as the King must be destroyed no competition being to them both The whole Power was with them they call a Parliament which acted meerly as they prescribed The King deposed by Act of Parliament submitted and resigned in hope of life which he could not have The other as unhappy Richard II. Prisoner to the Usurper Henry of Lancaster his Cousin-Germane The Fate of subdued Kings by Traytors is ever to run into the same Center Traytors leave nothing undone of the last Act of destroying Now the actings being thus what are the considerations upon it First these Persons and the Parliament were the first that ever acted so in England and so must derive the Justice and Authority of it out of themselvs and nothing from whatsoever had been done before Next there was no such thing as King or Parliament in the Nature of it As well Jack Cade or Wat Tyler if they had compleated their Rebellion might have convened any party out of the People calling it a Parliament set himself up King for one Subject hath as much Right to be King as any other Next such a Parliament as it was it was the Subject of an Army the Army of the Usurper by which he had got Possession and destroyed the King's Power so as in effect condemning deposing was the Act of the Army absolutely for so it must be done by such a party called a Parliament and for the purpose and so are all our Mock-shews to set up any wickedness own Authority but act servilly and are meer imposture Next the Act horrid Treason as was imaginable or possible to be in Nature Now the Question comes to be Whether doing wickedly can create a lawfulness If so all sins and villanies by the perpetrating them lose their Natures to be evils and become lawful A conceipt nothing that comes into imagination can be more monstrous There must be a first lawfulness in every Act else the doing it is a Wickedness and still that wickedness perpetuated and multiplied in the after-acting it Next this condemned by the first Parliament that was upon the change of the Power for so long as the Power continued it stood for good as all Wickedness does But the Parliament under the rightful King damns it as traiterous detestable to be driven out of the World never to rise up again pulling down God's Judgments upon the Land Civil War and all the Plagues of it I shall conclude this that Wickedness can be no President Now having gone along with him upon his particulars which he only asserts not proves my next is to take notice and mind him that he is very near losing his cause which I fear he will do anon for he is arguing to a lawfulness in their putting the King to death and it is his business to keep himself out of it and likewise the Parliament's Cause and War and the Religion Protestant and Presbyterian
the nature of Jurors so that it is the King's Commission that authorizeth and distinguisheth them When a Writ of Error issueth out of the Chancery to the House of Peerâ— they derive their Authority meerly from that Writ For the three Reasons aforesaid the House of Peers is no Court of Judicature at all without the King 's special Authority granted to them either by his Writ or his Commission As for the House of Commons they never pretended to any Power of Judicature and have not so much Authority as to administer an Oath Thus far his But the Argument is not at all pertinent as to the House of Lords whom they have expelled and all Form of Parliament or Callings but in the People their ground is onely upon a House of Commons as the People's Representatives Nevertheless we take the whole and give truly the Nature of a Parliament for the perfectest way of rejecting Falshood is by delineating the true Form It is not imaginable for a King to govern without the assistance and assent of the Peers for Government cannot stand alone for as they are ever a party where any King is the Question is only of the Commons Prin's plea for Lords pag. 182. which is an Adjunct and therefore the Searchers into Antiquity take upon them to antedate them and derive them but as an Accident to the Government in England But to take it in the whole it being a truly poised Government and mixed Interest hath left so great a share in the People as servs to treat their King 's with and be at all times able to gain conditions And God forbid any Power should deny to the People's good it can be no end of Government and therefore he is not single or alone but hath common consent in the great Interests of the Nation changing or making Laws or making impositions He must have common consent to this and this draws all the rest to it since hardly any thing can move but by these two Interests and this is the ballance of the Government to make it hang equal betwixt Prince and People And the evils and mischief that sometimes redounds is from the abuse of it not from the Nature of it being the best composition of Government in the World and the People freer under it than in any Common-wealth Government which they call free Government the Reason is a Secret till looked into Physically that is this best of all to be seen in our late long odious Parliament there all the People's Liberties were swallowed up the People uncreatured as it were no defensive all in the Parliament when as in the King and Parliament the People have a direct party and a defensive as there shall be cause against any deprivation of their Rights There are some Signals of Kingly absolute Right which need but naming as the King 's Adviseray to Bills which he will not pass which was ever effectual as to a total condemnation So as here was no Power out of the King all reduced to him in his last Power of denying and likewise of pardoning And this needs not plead any right for it but right of Nature in reason of Government else without such a Power the King might be reduced to nothing And a King never falls or loseth his Power but he is lost in himself too He does not retain Kingly Government but on condition to perish with it And therefore all Laws are styled of Grace and petitioned for because the People till they are passed the Royal assent have but a Right in Reason to them not in Law only from the Supream Law of Salus Populi which is the comprehensive of all Laws The common mistake is because the King cannot do such and such things without the Parliament Ergo The Parliament governs the King Now as to this Many may be said to govern me so as to restrain me that I cannot go beyond my own Power and yet this no active governing Power over another this is the easiest thing to conception that can come into imagination Is there not where any Right is which we call property a power of denying And this is all the absolute Parliamentary power considered dividedly from the King and this vast inconsequence containing all the means almost to be King unless the King would break throw it which is the hardest task any King can go about yet nothing of the Nature of governing power no agency or efficiency in it by it self but only a meer Negative Because I am engaged in this consideration I will resort back to the state of the Question of a Parliament to be the highest Judge of the safety or danger of the Republick The Answer is direct that the King is the sole Judge of the safety or danger of the Re-publick as King he is only trusted and there cannot be two such judging powers for then there can be no determination when they stand in competition Therefore all the Powers in the Kingdom act subordinately to the King and not against or athwart the King's Power for that were for a Being to destroy it self The distinction lies in this that they have nothing to do with the King's Power but the People's Rights which they dispose of by the King's consent and not absolutely at all out of themselvs In this they may oppose the King's desire that is they have a Negative Power not to be compelled or the People to be put out of possession without them But where the disagreement is they are to acquiesce and so nothing comes of it and the King fails of his end this is the height of their power Their Bills which they are free to make contain in them Grievances to be reformed which implies complaint and consent whatsoever the King cannot do by his quality singly as King he doth by consent of the People and that is the Character of a Parliament the People for it directly represents the Universality the People and hath directly and truly no power but what is nationally and naturally the People's so as look upon that you find this and no difference at all in it hence consenting and denying giving aiding being natural properties of Rights are left to them as the People in them And this though great as to all the means of governing it doth not come near it so vast a difference is betwixt being free in mine own and having Power over anothers as no reason needs to be given of it Nevertheless the King as the common Interest is not to be supposed deficient of the Publick means that were unnatural therefore as to Government it self all means are lawful nor any thing so concerning to the People as to keep the temperament for when they destroy that they lose the means to their own good I might leave it here in its causes but I shall say something by way of President Queen Elizabeth the greatest Courter of her People and yet the best Governour would lose nothing of her
Prerogative she did every thing with her Parliament as with Subjects they knew their own business and she would keep them to it and abundantly the better for their obedience for every thing is good or evil as it is governed Not a Fast or Humiliation day or Preaching His Plea for the Lords p. 409. as learned Mr. Prin hath given the recital of it that they could set up for themselves but she would check it and bring them to Humiliation for it So dangerous a wise Prince sees it popular liberty but to begin to creep out They had essayes upon her about Marriage she would not admit the pressure upon her nor suffer them to be Judg in it Then after that of her Successor that went nearer to her Camden's An aâ—s Elizb a pinching thought and in this the repulse of them was harder because apparently did depend upon it the safety or danger of the Kingdoms after her yet in this she was resolved 't was too precious to her to part with it to them kept it to the last hour of her life when she could live no longer then she declared a Successor imprisoned their Members that promoted it laid absolute peremptory command upon the House against it Pryn's Plea for the Lords p. 410 411. at other times imprisoned their Members and would usually tell them when they exceeded that it was in Her to give them being and to dissolve their being and to assent and dissent to any thing done in Parliament This from the best and wisest of Princes well knowing that it is not possible for a Prince to be just to the People without true obedience from the people King James his time by some Passages then in the Parliaments will shew us the difference betwixt Regal Right and Parliamentary Right Parliament 5 James Dr. Rawley's result from Sir Francis Bacon p. 38 39. the Earl of Salisburyes words to a Committee of the House That matter of War or Peace was Arcanum Imperii and must be kept within the vail nevertheless that sometimes Parliaments have been made acquainted with matter of War and Peace in a generality but it was upon one of these two motives when the King and Councel conceived that either it was material to have some declaration of the zeal and affection of the people or else when the King needed to demand monies and aids for the charge of the War The Earl of Northampton at the same time another of the Council of State that both by Philosophy and Civil Law Ordinatio belli et pacis est absoluti Imperii He further reasoned That the composition of the House of Common was meerly Democratical and intended to have a private and local Wisedome as to the places that sent them and not fit to examine secrets of State which depend upon variety of circumstances and although there be divers Gentlemen in the mixture of the House that are of good capacity and insight in matters of State yet that was the accident of the person not the intention of the place and things are to be taken in the institution not in the practice The Parliament of the 18th of King James was a Parliament of contest and dispute and held out long by an able King and a severe People It was an effectual Parliament as to the granting of Subsidies and reforming abuses yet in the end thrown off The evills that it had to work upon were the evils of Peace and making danger of Religion a Monster and looking at it through the glass of their own Passions would dictate extreams to the King about it and the Spanish match formidable and the Kings unkindnesses from Parliaments had put him upon petty helps as livelihoods Monopolies about those bred no breach but was matter served them to work upon and wholly put to them and the persons offenders in it exposed and the King himself a chief actor to suppress it And to pull down the Chancellor Bacon for Bribery was their work yet at last it had not a legal end of a Parliament but dissolved by Proclamation and Crimination The King enforced to this for this King never acted to publick offence by his Passion but meerly his necessity Therefore I shall resort back and take some remarks and passages of the proceedings along with me to find where the stone of it was After the matter of the punishments were over the great and high considerations as for diversion of the Match with Spain and declaring war against that King for the Palatinate and new devised pressures upon Papists and pressing executions of Laws upon them so as they involve all the Kings Interest into their hands under the notion that it was the Kingdomes Interest The King hearing of this and it beating thorow his sides betakes himself to high resolution and to prevent the prejudice of receiving it formally from them writes thus to the Speaker These are to command You to make known in Our Name unto the House that none therein shall presume henceforth to meddle with any thing concerning Our Government or deep matters of State and namely not to deal with Our dearest Son's Match with the Daughter of Spain and also not to meddle with any mans particulars which have their due motion in Our ordinary Courts of Justice And whereas we hear they have sent a Messenger to Sir Edwin Sandis to know the reasons of his late restraint You shall in Our Name resolve them That it was not for any misdemeanor of his in Parliament But to put them out of doubt of any question of that nature that may arise among them hereafter You shall resolve them in Our Name That we think Our selves very free and able to punish any mans misdemeanors in Parliament as well during their Sitting as after Their Answer by way of Petition to the King first Palliating over and with the manner and inducements to go upon such things they have these words In the discourse whereof we did not assume to our selves any power to determine of any part thereof nor intrude upon the Sacred bounds of your Royall Authority to whom and to whom only we acknowledg it doth belong to Resolve of Peace and War and of the Marriage of the most Noble Prince your Son but as your most loyal and humble Subjects and Servants representing the whole Commons of your Kingdome who have a large interest in the happy and prosperous Estate of your Majesty and your Royal Posterity and of the flourishing Estate of Our Church and Common-wealth did resolve out of our cares and fears truly and plainly to demonstrate these things to your Majesty which we were not assured could otherwise come so safely and clearly to your knowledg and that being done to lay the same down at your Majesties feet without expectation of any other answer of your Majesty touching these higher points then what at your good pleasure and in your own time should be held fit Now if we do but
make a breathing space and a stop here or being like getting to some heighth of ground look about us certainly it shews that no Supremacy is pretended to but utterly disclaimed and all resolving determining or the last power in business of Government and no persons can come lower or assert more extreamly and exemplarly against themselves in any such point of Right So as we see plainly Governing Power is all with the King and the question comes to be only about propounding proposing discoursing upon those high points of Regal power in Government not being specially required to it which Kings think comes too near their skirts like David cutting off a lap of King Saul's Garment to shew only that he was in his power so Kings think the one cannot be done or assumed that is entering into or assuming out of self Authority to treat of the very essentialls about Government or the great weighty occasions that refer to it but like the cutting off of the lap of the Garment begets a power over the person and this was the very stone of difference in this Parliament so as we see to how neer a point it is reduced a little space or difference one would think betwixt proposing only without power of resolving and not proposing now there is nothing more satisfactory then the Kings own answer to them about this for no person could speak his business so well as himself and this very particular of the passage it is a School of Learning Now because I will not altogether write out of another nor be tedious I omit it It is no matter let it be amongst arcana imperii not to bring all into vulgar light else the reasons might be abstracted why Parliaments are not of themselves to assume to treat of the points proper to the King in Government I shall leave this and only excuse my self in it being far too high for me that I only do it in the defensive to regal Right which is higher and to the peoples right which does not consist in confusion of Government but in the certainty of it Having done with this high consideration I shall take notice of his dangerous inserted words of Majestas Realis the self same as condemned in the Spencers in Ed. 2. his time and likewise in the following Parliaments of that Age for the most destructive design against the persons and safety of Kings that ever was imagined A dividing of the Kings person and his end of Governing they would have the Majesty to consist in the end and so diviseable from the person and so the King might be deposed and destroyed and yet the Majesty whole What will not mans brain hatch when he is disposed to be wicked This was new forged brought out of the Mint again and begot the Notion of Treason against the Common-Wealth and served to make the King a Traytor I desire his patience to read Sir Edward Cook â—o 7. Rep. â—lv Case 7. Report Calvins Case there he will tell him that all Allegiance is tyed and refers to the person of the King that the whole consistency of Majesty and Kingship must be in a person in being not to hang in the Ayre as an accident without his subject all Relation all Attributes all Majesty are but rayes from that body dividedly from the King can be no consideration at all of Treason or Majesty this Serpenti e way of creeping betwixt the Kings person and his Authority was a device to destroy him Object When the Legislative Power and highest judicial Power is by the constitution of the Government divided between the Prince and the Senate and so the Soveraignty divided many will be ready to think with Grotius de jure belli Lib. 1.13 pag. 91. That the Prince invading the Senate's Right may justly be resisted and may lose his Right quod locum saith Grotius habere censeo etiam si dictum sit belli potestatem penes Regem fore id enim de bello externo intelligendum est cum alioqui quisquis imperii summi partem habeat non potest non jus habere eam partem tuendi quod ubi fit potest Rex etiam suam imperii partem belli jure amittere Answ These parties will still stumble at the same stone that is because of the Legislative power in some sort or manner or form of it in the Parliament therefore the Supremacy which does not follow for the Supremacy is the sole Governing Power and Government is a constant being the other but at times and by occasion so as no proportion at all is betwixt a constant governing Power and an occasional Power and when they are demanded but about their own Rights it being planted in Nature that where Right is there is a power of denying and a power of giving yielding and consenting and this is the Parliamentary power properly and per se all which arises out of the Rights and property of the People meerly Now these persons will not discern the difference betwixt the power of consenting which must needs be likewise a power of denying and active efficient power which is in Government it self and is alwayes constant and universal It has the properties as the Soul in the Animal cannot have parts in it and dividedness or to discontinue Now they introduce this their objection with a When when it is so that is the Soveraignty divided they should prove where it is so I think not in nature of two Soveraign Powers in one Government certainly this is no Government but distinct Governments and how it can refer to one people governed requires the inquisition for when they stand upon terms of difference then the Government presently is in the state of War and none to reconcile it being equal divided Powers Rights may lye so but Governing Power cannot lye so the distance is the same as betwixt two Forreign States or Princes who may reconcile and accommodate their reciprocal good so long as they can accord upon it as well as these several distinct Powers in one body and in this either party upon the difference betakes himself to his defensive and then the Government ceases to be so as it is not at all consistent with the nature of Government but of Governments in respect the one of the other All Governments are either Monarchial Governments or mixed Governments now in Monarchical Government first it supposes absoluteness of Supremacy in the Monarch or Prince and then it cannot suppose it likewise in any other for then the Government should be a Monster of two heads and besides so cannot act the Powers in counterpoise being equal and so it is no Power but a Power of destroying it self as equal contraries when they meet are destructive to the matter that is the subject of them Peradventure some instances may be found of some that have been called Kings and have been but head Members of Common-wealths and such their safety and being is to act subordinately to the
given me the Kingdomes of the Earth And Daniel most full the Pattent of the King as extensive to all Creatures and Powers under him Dan. 1. ver 37 38. The God of Heaven hath given thee a Kingdom Power and Strength and Glory and in all places where the Children of men dwell the Beasts of the field and the Fowls of the Heaven has he given into thy hand and hath made thee Ruler over them all An Illustration of Gods dominion over all Creatures and acting by Kings his immediate Vice-gerents to the end of the 5th chapter of Daniel being nothing else then Gods clayming his Title over Kings as derivative from God and accountable to him Now all this is from the great end in nature that Kings being to rule the people which is Gods proper Office and Attribute all Power and all Dominion and all Providence being his they represent God and are his Image and Effigies in Ruling and Governing and this makes their dependance to be meerly of God and not accountable to any Power under God The nature of it is shewed in that of Saul as being the first King to the Jews and being the institutive of it comprehends the nature of it The person was meerly of Gods choice not left to the people nor any power left in them much less over the King In that day shall they cry unto the Lord sayes the Text That is 1 Sam. 8.18 no power to be against the Kings Power but an appeal only to an higher Power that is to God himself his Author and Founder they might complain of him that was set over them but had not any Authority of their own over him And this makes it in its nature to be the greatest trust in the World because there is no remedy against it contrary to Mr. Baxter's sense abusing the Term making Trust subject The reason of this absolute subjection of the People to Government lyes in the nature of it that no medium can be found betwixt power of Governing and liberty in the people as not Governed to be subject only to the good of Government is no Government at all or to be subject at all therefore of meer force from its nature it leaves nothing in the wills of the people so as no such mean or half being of it can be by any constitution provision or Policy whatsoever when it comes to Govern all those things though part of the Government yet come under the governing Power Now for the Originals of Ruling Powers ordinarily amongst men as to the persons ruling in such a Line and Succession we shall find it to be still from a first Power before it came to Governing Power the one introductive of the other for Power is its matter and nature for we see all Government is Power and the Power will govern Therefore equivocally the terms and names are used sometimes calling it the Government and sometimes the Power so as it is the same and signifies the same thing inseperables in nature Government and Power no remove can be in it for where the Power is there the Government will go along with it Hence it is that there is never any discontinuance in governing Power over the people In the most confused tumultuous War and distraction that ever was yet there is power still somewhere or other that contains the peoples liberty and subjects them so as there is not one moment or minute of time in the World where society and community of man is that there is any vacuum of Power to be over them and although powers devest one another yet the Series of governing Power is still continued and in all such removes of the Powers yet the Power never falls but is kept alwayes up and is in some still and is as inseperable from the People as the matter and the Form which never are asunder For that which we call Power out of the People it is not the people but a Power acting upon the People and in such a circumstance of it if it become too powerful for the Government then it becomes the Government it self Now having shewed thus the nature of it it destroyes all those imaginary Theaters that they would erect and build popular liberty upon and popular right over Kings They would fancy governing Power to be of the wills of the people and the people the Author so impossible an assertion as I only leave it upon what I have stated and how contradictory it is to nature in all consideration of it so as still the people is but the subject matter of Government never the Author of it nor does Government ever come below the people in the cause of it but must derive out of its own cause which is power to be above the people and so in all end and acting of it All this is still to explode that Monstrous conceit of the peoples instituting the Government or more Monstrous consequence of it the people as the first cause of it to dispose of it and destroy it It is observable in Government that Laws and Liberties come afterward to the people after power of the Government it self In the Norman Conquest all lay flatted some time under it till afterward as the Reporters of those times tell us that the party of the Conqueror or their Posterity did revive the English Liberties first the Conqueror's absolute will served them to expel and dispossess the Natives and after they were glad of establishments in Government to assure their own condition and what they had gained So as hereby we see Governments the farther they go on from their beginnings the more they take in of composition to their first single Nature so as still the Originals of Government are most absolute Hence it is manifest that Power is their Fountain and first cause as such is their Natures and the People's Freedom still is under Government and when Government is most confused then is their Freedom least so as still Power is over them and are alwayes subject to it let the Form of it be what it will To consider it in common Reason and Understanding the King took his Being from the People's Trust in Mr. Baxter's sense therfore the People are to dispose of him This were for the People not to be governed for then the Right were in the People and the King betrayed to govern under another Authority to make it accomptable Therefore this supposeth a Monster in nature and it would evermore make Government destructive to it self for then it doth not govern for where the end and ultimate of Power is there the Government is I shall insert something that is legal in this pertinent to the Case of the King of England how he comes to be King Sir Edward Coke that was a man popular enough in his third part of his Institutes pag. 7. saith That there is no such thing of the Kingly Being in England as an Inter-Regnum nor any Act confers to the making
AN ANSVVER TO A PASSAGE IN Mr. Baxters Book INTITULED A Key for Catholicks Beginning pag. 321. concerning the KING'S being put to Death By John Nanfan Esq LONDON Printed for John Jones Book-Seller in Worcester To the Reader I Know not why I should endeavour to please or satisfy concerning this that I throw it abroad which was solitary and private to me in the worst of times or any such Apologies or endeavours or essayes to take off censure It were too much submitting and subjecting to others let the matter and subject it self speak for it and let others condescend their Judgments to it and that is all that is desired It has no end out of it self Particular Reasons I have as that there is as good warrant in me to take off Mr. Baxter's presumptive violent injurious Arguments against Kings and Governments as he to assert them the cause is his he the assailant I am but the Defendant The sally out into the World and into so great an Interest as Kings Governments and terms of submission to them and when in some cases the people to kill and slay and destroy all these great exorbitant monstrous considerations come from Mr. Baxter he hath stated cases fixed them to Posterity that they may be fruitfull to generate in the World mine but an Arrest upon him both to redeem truth and likewise to let the World know that great Writers may contain much iniquity in them and how the World is to beware of them But why do I entertain the Reader at the Porch or without the Door and seem to intreat him to like the structure within which he is to behold Therefore I give it off only this that it speaks that time that disconsolate condition then it was made to and making it now another thing is not my end but to shew and represent the same for every thing has its rectitude in respect of the point it tends to And this good in it that though the subject sad yet it raises more considerations out of it and from it for we have our enjoyment from good times but our information more from bad And besides these considerations are general so as no time oâ—â—â— them truths that are not particular in their nature have an eternity in them And for ought we know there is as great a Wisdome required to retain our Government as to attain to it that lay but in one design and easily done because not discerned in the doing this is of a perpetual providence and perpetual danger and enmity against it and we are to betake our selves to all considerations wherein our good and evill is contained and publick good is the great end the wheel and sway and compass to all motions all particulars but considered in it AN ANSVVER TO A PASSAGE IN Mr. BAXTERS Book INTITULED A Key for Catholicks Beginning pag. 321. concerning the Kings being put to Death HE begins thus Concerning the Death of the King I shall not meddle at this time with the cause nor meddle with the Reasons brought for it or against it Answ It will appear by so much as concerns me to answer to whether Mr. Baxter meddle with the Cause or not This pretended abstemiousness is but to make it pierce the deeper and to â—ake his strength more considerable He is as great an Assertor of it as possibly he can find matter to make it speculatively true though in fact he keeps out of it Whilst he vies Interests with the Papists he takes upon him to hold the Ballance this of murdering the King in manner and form of it in one end of the Scale and that of the Popes cursing Kings and consequently murdering of them in the other and he finds his leighter by much which is the triumph of his cause and to this he does abet all his strength to make it good which is by making the evil of it less so as this is the very state of his Cause and you shall see him appearing in it by degrees like a winding stairs till he comes up to the top I shall take all his by way of Objections and answer to it Object The Providence of God hath so contrived it that nothing but ignorance or blind malice can lay it upon the Protestants Episcopal or Presbyterian that strove so much against it and suffered so much for it as they have done Answ In this he doth confound Interests to joyn the Episcopal with the Presbyterian I am very confident the Episcopal would not mix with any other Interest in such a defence and to peece them to the Presbyterian is an abuse It is a kind of Policy to defend a corrupt cause by taking into it that which cannot be denyed to be just and clear in it self and under colour of that to cry up the whole Not that I mean to condemn the Presbyterians directly for the Kings Death I leave that to particular Arguments as they fall out and to be understood in a just medium in it relating to Presbyterians and Protestants both that acted But his further Object When many on the other side charged the Scots and the Imprisoned Ministers of London with those that were put to death for going too far on the other side in manifesting their distasts of which I take not on me to be Judg but mention it onely as Evidence that clears them from the Deed. Answ How cautious Mr. Baxter is that he will not take upon him to be Judg who were in the right of those two parties one the Presbyterians that disliked the putting the King to Death and the other that acted it and were angry with them for disliking and expressing their dislikes He is very wary in this here with his reserves and savings that he does declare it only as matter of fact so tender is he not to engage too far to judg or conclude any thing in it This makes me doubt that in some passages hereafter where he calls it odious and detestable that he has a latitude in those expressions for an Act may have those epithiteâ— and yet possibly be lawful Now whether there may not be some thing of this in it though he declares against the fact I may doubt because of his denying here to condemn it Certainly he that in his Soul has not a full abhorrency to it is of the infection of it and no other construction can be made He goes on Object To vindicate the Protestants openly before all the World and to all posterity from that fact it is most publickly known that both Houses of Parliament in their protestations engaged themselves and the Nation to be true to the King Answ This was but in order to the War which they were forming against the King It was made the very means of raising the People by whom the War must be acted Upon a plain down-right way of fighting against the King could have had no colour with the People who are always in such popular confusions to be