Person tho he can't from His Text. When whatever they would gather from that Apostle the Lawyers Popelings have nothing left to shew for theirs unless the very Charter and grant of their King yet tho this Doctrine be as far from Rome as they think the Romanist from Heaven tho their Writers with Hunts own Brutish Rage have run it down tho it be so directly destructive of the Papal power still has this preposterous piece of paradox made it Popish and treated it almost in the same Language the Piousprelate did their Idol Church and all the dangerous Dissenters do our own Wolves Thieves Enemies of Christ Brood of Antichrist Babylonish Beast Devilish Drab sink of Sodom Seat of Satan It is a pretty way of Confutation indeed in the very beginning of an Argument to beg the Question He takes it for granted from the Text of Saint Peter that Kings are but an Ordinance of man and then stoutly concludes that it is impossible that any that is of Man's appointment can ever be of God's Ordination to be presumptively bassled recommand me to such a disputant And with that supposititious Triumph does as some think a Jesuit's Book de Jure Magistratuum enter the List full of Victory even before the Battle and this perverted Text in one of his Editions is turned into the Laurel and Lemma to Crown the Forehead of that Impudent piece This is made the Goliah of those Philistines who not with their bulk alone but with the very Letter of the Bible and the Book of Life can defie the Living God for such a Construction upon Saint Peter by common sense can never be put for place this power of Ordaining Kings once in the Power of SVBJECTS and all the World can never hinder them from being too the SVPREAM 〈◊〉 Was not this very Text actually turn'd up for the Supream Authority of the Parliament of England And was that too meant by St. Peter when in the very next Line he calls the King Supream Seditious Dolts do not make the Bible contradict it self tho your Books do does not this very Text take almost an expressive care to prevent even with providence such a silly construction and give a Signal Signification where this Supremacy resides viz. in the King But to give these well read Rebels rope enough and let them stretch their Treasonable Positions as they ought their Necks I 'll plead for them and in that which can be their only Reply viz. That this Supremacy must be understood only to be in these Kings after they are so chosen by the People But no their own Text won't allow that neither for in the very next Verse it tells us also of such persons as are Commission'd sent under him as ours has it Governors and some other Versions Captains Judges and sure had theirs been the Apostles sense too He would have more expresly let us known That Kings were first Commissionated and sent by the People before that they could send out the Peoples Governors and if we can Credit some of these Gentlemens own Writings Their KINGS and this Apostles are not all of a piece and so their Principles and the Text wont hang well together for their Kings which they 'll have to be of Man's Ordination cannot send Governors under them but as * Pryn positively tells us that People that Elect their King must chuse also the Judges and Officers if the Kings have had such a choice 't is but by the Peoples permission that such Officers are the Peoples And that his Brother Bodin you must know a great politician says That the sending them is not the Right of the Sovereign but in the Subject So that those Kings whose Divine Right they deny must needs be of another kind than those mentioned in Saint Peter for he makes his Kings so Supream that they send Governors themselves and that for the punishment of such Evil doers But to come homer to Mr. Hunt that I know values himself upon his much Law and his mighty Learning his Remarks upon his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 will tell us he understood as much Greek as that came to when he was at School Yet betrays his little understanding of the Greek Fathers his very Schrevelius would have shown that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 might be taken for Creature as well as Creation but his Scapula that more especially it is to be taken so in the Epistles And this has been the Resolution of one of the first Reformers of our Religion And I hope sure they 'll favour him That the general signification of this word in Scriptural Expression is taken for all Mankind and I have another the principal Reformer by me the Bible in Columns with one Greek two Latin Versions and one Dutch which I take to be the Labours of the Learned Luther where one of the Latin Translations of this very Text of Peter is expresly Omni Creaturae And that other Humanae Ordinationi is mark't with a reference to the Marginal Annotation which is Omnibus filiis Hominis And yet all this while we shan't make Nonsense of the Text as well as they put upon it contradiction and the greater absurdity for such Scriptural Figuratives are frequent where Vniversal expressions are only applicable to some particular things they would express so that when he tells us Be Subject to all mankind or to all the Sons of Men is easily understood all those of them to whom we owe Subjection and as if the good Apostle whom these miscreants would so much abuse did design to prevent such an imputation and even dissipate the Difficulty and doubt together even he explicates that General Expression of that one Text by telling us particularly to whom our Submission is to be paid both in that and the other viz. Kings as Supream and their Governors as sent And Lastly can any Soul that has but Common Sense fancy from the complicated consideration of that part of the Apostle's that thus pressingly inculcates Obedience to Governors that it did design the least room for such a Latitude that not only would leave them Indifferent to obey but such an one as they have made of it since even an encouragement to Rebel sure that submissive Preacher of the Cross so much his Saviours Disciple that he suffer'd on one too and that without resistance to a persecuting power that great Assertor of his Soveraign's Supremacy that in the very next Lines next to fearing his God commands Honoring his King as if he would express somewhat of that Divinity they deny with the closeness of the Connexion sure that most Primitive Pattern of Obedience did not pen his Epistles to teach a Julian the Doctrine of Resistance or an Hunt his Associate to debase the Divine Right the Throne of his King to the very dunghill of the People And were this Doctrine not to be countenanced by the Word of GOD we have only Mr. Hunt's Word
the Pest and Plague of the People are priz'd with our Republicans as the Philosophers and the Schools do their propositions of Eternal truths they imbibe the Poyson and exalt improve it too they sublimate the very Mercury of Mr. Hobs and whereas he equals us only in a state of Nature our Levellers will lay us all Common under the Inclosures of a Society and the several restrictions of so many Civil Laws But to what tends this their turning all the Power of a Parent into Tyranny as if a Father could not have an Authority over his Child unless he be bound to make it his Slave as if the Chastisement of a Father could not Evidence his Supremacy over his Son unless like the Saturn of the Easterlings he Sacrifice him to the Fire and torment it in the Flame But this paternal Right of the Father must suffer by these Factious Fools from the same sort of Inferrences they bring against the Divine Right of their King which may only serve with some Loyal Hearts to confirm the great sympathy there is between them for as by the Law of Nature a Father can't be said to injure his Son so neither by those of the Land can our Soveraign wrong his Subjects For say these Seditious ones your Divinest Monarchs by that Doctrine can Hang Burn Drown all their Subjects they should put in Damn too for once since they may as well infer from it his sending them to the Devil but cannot common Sense obtain amidst these transports of Passion can they not apprehend a Father to have any paternal Authority over his Family unless he be able to Murder every Man of it The Civil Laws the municipal ones of his Land if a Member of a Society supersede such a feverity and if a Patriarchal Prince must be supposed as were several of old after the 〈◊〉 then the Affection of a Father And the Laws of Nature were sufficient to fecure the Son or 〈◊〉 the Servant from any 〈◊〉 but what some proportionable 〈…〉 so also did this Divine Right 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Soveraign as entirely 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the great Turk yet the 〈◊〉 part of those Civil Sanctions to which the Divinest of them all would be 〈◊〉 or at least the precepts of the Divinity their God under 〈◊〉 they 〈◊〉 that will oblig'd them both 〈◊〉 Justice and Mercy the two great Attributes of him whom they represent But since they would make this Empire of a paternal Power so 〈◊〉 in Reason let us see how it has all along 〈◊〉 in the Letter of the Law and if it has there 〈◊〉 been 〈◊〉 upon as a Notion so 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 The most illuminated Reason of our eminent 〈◊〉 must submit to be much in the dark The Romans from the result of their Imperial Sanctions look'd upon themselves to have such an absolute Power and Authority over their Sons and Daughters that they tell us expressly it was a peculiar Prerogative and privileg'd of the Citizens of Rome and that there was no other Nation that could Exercise such a Jurisdiction they could 〈◊〉 for ever by this Power of the Parent any thing that was acquired by the Son and give it to any whom they pleas'd whereas it might have been an Argument enough of a paternal Power had they been but only usufructuaries and the Dominion remained in the Child and such a Sense of Soveraignty do the Civilians express to reside in the Father of a Family that they gave him the same Appellation with that of a King and tell us by the name of a Family the Prince of it is also understood and tho Mr. Hunt tells us a Story out of the Cabala of the Jews Laws and the Tract of Maimonides that they lookt upon their Children 〈◊〉 of Course when they came to Thirteen and that then they could claim it as their right to be free I must tell him from the Constitutions of the Imperial that must be of more force among us unless we resolve still that even Christians shall Judaize that no Sons were ever emancipated or emitted out of the power of the Parent unless they could prevail upon him for his own consent that by no meanshe could be compell'd to it and they had no freedom de Jure till their Fathers were de facto dead And tho 〈◊〉 in his Comment on that part of the Institution says They became sui Juris at 25 from their Manner and Custome yet concludes the Law of Nature oblig'd them still to their Parent which no civil one could disanull The Duty that their Digests say was due to this Paternal power which they 〈◊〉 almost as Sacred was exprest by the word piety and a learn'd Civilian of our own laments that there is no more provisions 〈◊〉 in our English Laws for the Duty of the Child and the protection of the Parent and with them so great was the crime of parricide that they could not a long time invent an adequate punishment for such an unproportionable Guilt tho they had one for Treason against the Prince And tho our own Laws do not make the Paternal power savour so much of Soveraignty yet we shall see they sufficiently evince that the Parent has a power very Analogous too it whereas Mr. Hunt will not allow it to have the least Relation which remisness of our Civil Institutions might well proceed from a presumption of our knowledge of the express command in the Decalogue of which the Romans were ignorant tho we have no formal Emancipation now in use which does imply a power of Government yet our old Lawyer tells us still that Children are in the power of their Parents till they have extrafamiliated them by giving them some portion or Inheritances and the Custody of them while minors which 〈◊〉 went to the King upon the presumption I suppose of his only ability to be a second Father that was settled in the Parent both by Common-Law and Statute for there lay a good action against any one for seducing a Mans Son as well as Servant out of his power which does imply that there is a power out of which he may be seduced and thus I have endeavor'd to shew the first Foundation of power to have been in the Fathers of Families And it signifies nothing whither every Father of it Reigns in it as a King now and therefore Mr. Hunt his impertinence is inconclusive and part of his Assertion a plainly when he would infer from the continuance of the Parents Authority over their Children together with the Soveraign power distinct that therefore there was never any Foundation of a Patriarchal power for he might as well tell us That because we have no Parents now but what are Subject to the Municipal Laws of the Land therefore there was never any Patriarch in the Bible never an Abraham an Isaac or a Jacob that had an absolute Dominion over their own Families or none now amongst some
his Forces invading this Nation do Enact c. That our Kings in the time of the Saxons Danes and some part of the Normans had more absolute Power over their Subjects than some of their Successors 〈◊〉 himself can't deny the Charter of Liberties being made but in the Reign of Henry the Third and when the People had less of Priviledges the Kings must be supposed to have had more of Praerogative therefore we shall examine only what and where the Supremacy is at present and where the Laws of the Land not the Will of the Prince do place it In the Parliament that was held at York in Edward the Seconds time The Rebellious Barons that had violently extorted what Concessions they pleas'd from the Crown in His like those in the three foregoing Reigns when they seal'd almost each Confirmation of their Charter in Blood were all censured and condemn'd and the encroaching Ordinances they made in those Times all repeal'd Because says the Statute The Kings Royal Power was restrain'd against the Greatness of his Seigniory Royal contrary to the State of the Crown and that by Subjects Provisions over the Power Royal of the Ancestors of our Lord the King Troubles and Wars came upon the Realm I look upon this as an absolute Acknowledgment of a Royal Power which is sure the same with his Soveraign sufficiently distinguisht here from the Parliaments or the Peoples co-ordinate Supremacy for those condemn'd Ordinances were lookt upon as Usurpations upon the Kings Supremacy which they call the Power Royal of his Ancestors and not as our Author would have too of the Sovereign power of Lords and Commons At the Convention of the three Estates first of Richard the Third where the Parliament call themselves so themselves expound also what is meant by it And say it is the Lords Spiritual Temporal and Commons of this Land assembled in present Parliament so that we have here the whole three States besides the King owning themselves such without assuming to themselves a Soveraign power recognizing the Right of Richard and acknowledging him the Sovereign And tho I shall for ever condemn as well as all Ages will their allowing his Usurpation a Right which was an absolute wrong yet this is an undeniable Argument that then they did not make their King Co-ordinate with themselves made themselves declared themselves three States without him and acknowledged their King the Sovereign and Supream That Act that punisht appeals to Rome with a premunire in Henry the Eighth's time gives this Reason why none should be made to the Pope nor out of the Kingdom because the King alone was only the supream head in it It tells us expressly That England is an Empire that the King the Supream Head has the Dignity and Royal Estate of the Emperial Crown unto whom a body Politick divided into Terms and Names of Spirituality and Temporality been bounden 〈◊〉 next to God humble Obedience c. Who has furnisht him with Plenary Entire Power 〈◊〉 Authority Prerogative and Jurisdiction Here his Body Politick is devided into Spiritual and Temporal here he is called the supreme Head and here I think is a full Recognition of his sole Sovereignty And 't is strange that what a Parliament did in Opposition to Popery should be so zealously contradicted by such Sycophants that pretend so much to oppose it In the next place he tells us of an error he lay under that he thought our Commonalty had not formally assembled in Parliament before Henry the Thirds time but of that now is fully convinc'd by the Labours of some learned Lawyers whom he names and lets them know too how much they are obliged to him for the Honor But I suppose he reads but one sort of Books and that such as suit with his Humor and Sedition and of that Nature he can meet with Variety for I dare avow that within the space of six years all that ever was or can be said against the best of Government our own all that was or ever will be rak't up for justifying a Rebellion and restoring a Republick from falsifyed Roll and Record from perverted History and Matter of Fact by Pens virulent and Factious with all the Art and Industry and whatever thought could invent for its Ruine and Destruction has been Printed and Publisht such an Universal Conspiration of Men of several Faculties each assisting with what was his Excellency his Talent in Treason which seemed to be the Task-Master of the Town and Monopolizer of Trades But our Politician might return to his old Opinion again did he but consult other Authors I believe as learned Antiquarians I am sure more Loyal Subjects who can shew him that the Saxons Councils call'd the Witena Gemotes had in them no Commons That the Conqueror call'd none of them to his great Councils none in those of his two Sons that succeeded nor none in any of the Parliaments down to Henry the Third my Lord Coke tells us of the Names this Parliament had before the Conquest as Sinoth Michel or Witena Gemote which he says implyed the Great Court or Meeting of the King and all his Wise Men And also sometimes of the King with his Council of his Bishops Nobles and the Wisest of the People and unless from the wisest of the People and all his Wise Men they can make up an House of Commons I am sure from this Authority they can have no proof and from Wise Men can be gathered nothing but such as were Noble or chief of the Realm for the meaner sort and that which we now call the Commonality were then far enough from having any great share of Learning or common Understanding and then besides these Wisest of the People were only such whom the King should think Wise and admit to his Council far from being sent by their Borroughs as elected Senators King Alfred had his Parliament and a great one was held by King Athelstan at Grately ' which only tells us there were Assembled some Bishops Noble-Men and the Wise-Men whom the King called which implies no more then those he had a mind should come But the Antiquity of a Parliament or that of an House of Commons is not so much the thing these Factious Roll and Record Mongers contend for 't is its Superiority Supremacy and there endeavours to make them antient is but in order to the making their Power Exorbitant and not to be controul'd by that of their King whom in the next place this Re-publican can scarce allow the power of calling them at his Pleasure and dissolving them when he pleases But so great is the Power of Truth and the Goodness of the Cause he Opposes that he is forc't to contradict himself to desend his Paradoxes For he tells us the King is obliged with an hear say Law which his learned in the Faculty and Faction can't find out yet to call Parliaments as often as need should be that is
Burgesses elected by themselves but this can't be gathered from Eadmerus the much better Authority who in the Titles and the Stile of near Nine or Ten Councils of his time not so much as mentions them King Stephen what he wanted and was forc't to spare in Taxations which were not then granted by the suffrages of the Common People tho they commonly bear the greatest burden of it tho he did not according to the Power he was then invested with raise great Sums upon his Subjects and the greatest Reason because he could not the Continual Wars having impoverisht them as well as their Prince and it has the proverbial Authority of necessitated Truth That even where it is not to be got the King himself must foregoe his Right yet this mighty Monarch's power was such that Confiscations supplyed what he could not Tax and as our Historian tells us upon light Suggestions not so much as just Suspicions he would seize upon their Goods and as I remember the Bishop of Salisbury's Case in his time confirms But tho the Menace of the threatning King the Text be turned now into the clear Reverse and our Kings Loyns no heavier then the very Finger of some of his Predecessors still we can find those that can preach him down for a Rehoboam or some Son of Nebat that makes Israel to Sin Henry the Second resum'd by his own Act all the Crown Lands that had been sold or given from it by his 〈◊〉 and this without being questioned for it much less deposed or murdered whereas when our Charles the First attempted only to resume the Lands of Religious Houses that by special act of the Parliament in Scotland had been settled on the Crown but by Usurpation were shared among the Lords when 't was only to prevent their Scandalous defrauding of the poor Priest and the very box of the poor to keep them from an 〈◊〉 and even a cruel Lording it over the poor Peasant in a miserable Vassallage beyond that of our antiquated Villains and when he endeavoured all this only by the very Law of all the Land by an Act of Renovation Legal Process and a Commission for the just surrendring Superiorities and Tyths so unjustly detain'd from the Crown but our modern Occupants of the Kirks Revenue had far less Reverence for the State chose much rather to Rebel against their Prince for being as they would Phrase it Arbitrary than part with the least power over their poor Peasants which themselves exercised even with Tyranny This was the very beginning of the first Tumults in that Factious Kingdom and 't is too much to tell you in what they ended Richard the First had a trick I am sure would not be born with now he pretends very cunningly to have lost his Signet and puts out a Proclamation that whoever would enjoy what he had under the former must come and have it confirmed by the new and so furnisht himself with a fine fund he could fairly sell and pawn his Lands for the Jerusalem Journey and as fouly upon his return resume them without pay And all this the good peaceable Subject could then brook without breaking into Rebellion and a bloody War and as they had just then none of their Great Charter that made afterward their Kings the less so neither had they such Rebellious Barons that could not be contented even with being too Great as they were then far from having granted so gracious a Petition as that of Right so neither you see so ready to Rebel and that only because they could not put upon their Prince the deepest Indignities the greatest wrong And these warrantable proceedings of our Princes whose power in all probability was unconfin'd before the Subjects Charter of Priviledges was confirm'd must needs be boundless when there were yet no Laws to Limit them yet these two Presidents were as impertinently applyed by the Common Hackney Goose quils whose Pens were put upon by the Parliament to scribble Panegyricks upon a Common-wealth to prove all our Kings a Catalogue of Tyrants tho the Presidents they brought from those times were clear Nonsense in the Application and no News to tell us or reproach to them that those Princes were Arbitrary when they had yet given no grants to restrain their Will Here I hope is sufficient Testimony and that too much to Demonstrate that our Kings of old by long Prescription were so far from being guided and governed by a Parliament as our Factious Innovator would have them now that in truth they never had any such Constitution and the People then insisted so little on their own Priviledges that they could not tell what they were and the Princes Prerogative so great that even their property could hardly be called their own But these being but Presidents before their Charters were granted or the Commons came in play tho these preceding Kings might deviate from the common Custom of the Realm in many that some may call irregular Administrations yet the Customs of the Kingdom relating to the Royal Government in all those Reigns were never questioned much less altered they never told their Kinge then as this piece of Sedition does now that their Nobles were to manage their Affairs of State as well as he would have even a Council of Commons We come to consider now whether from the granting them Charters which was done in the next Reign that of King John when the long tugged for Liberties were first allowed or from the Constitution of admitting the Commons to consult which by the greatest Advocates can't be made out handsomely before this Kings time or his Son and Successors who might well be necessitated to Consult the meaner sorts when all the great were in Arms and wisely flatter their Commons into peace when the Lords had rebelled in an open War tho' still good Authorities will not allow them to be called in either of their Reigns not so much as to be mentioned in any of their Councils and that even to the 18 of Edward the First wee 'll see I say now whether from these as they count them the most happy times That blessed Epoche wherein their Kings were first confined down to those which Posterity will blush at the Period of Villany when this Proposition was among the rest proposed whither ever the Parliament pretended unless when they actually rebelled as they did here to manage their King and his Affairs of State The greatest Lawyer and the most Equitable one that lived in this Henry the Thirds time tells us the King has a power and Jurisdiction over all that are in his Kingdom that all are under him that he has not an Equal in the Realm and sure the Project of putting the Parliament upon choosing of his Council for the managing of his Affairs or assuming themselves to manage it certainly would make the Subject have some power over him make him more then Equal or
Co-ordinate as the more modern Contenders for the Peoples Supremacy very Magisterially are pleased to Phrase it In the Reign of Edward the First the Parliament declares they are bound to assist their Sovereigns at all Seasons and in that very Sessions declared the Supream power to be his proper and peculiar Prerogative and so far from taking upon them to manage Him or His Affairs or the setting a Council over Him as a superintendent In Edward the Second's time they several times confirm'd to him the power of the Sword as his Sole undoubted unquestionable Prerogative and that he could distrain for the taking up of 〈◊〉 all that held by Knights Service and had twenty Pounds per An. and I think that allowed him to be his own Adviser when it put him into an absolute Condition to Command But I confess his Seditious and Rebellious Subjects afterward served Him just as these our Proposers did their Soveraign took upon themselves to reform his Council managed His Affairs till they did all the Kingdom too deposed him with that power of the Sword they themselves had several times in his very Reign put in his Hand as ours also denyed His Majesty the Commission of Array which they well knew the Laws allowed But as this Usage was shown to both so was it done to bind them both that both might be more easily Butchered In the following Reign of this unfortunate Prince's Son too forward to mount the Throne before his Father had thoroughly left it which he could not be said to relinquish but with his Life there I 'll grant this Republican his own Rebel Tenent was as stoutly maintained but by whom why by the very same Wretches whom too several Parliaments had condemned for the same sort of damnable Opinions and solemnly sent them into Exile too the daring and presumptuous Spencers who being the first Authors of that Seditious Sophistry that damnable Distinction of parting His Majesties Person from his political Capacity that is making Allegiance no longer Law than their King could maintain his Authority with Arms for that must be the meaning of such Treasonable Metaphysicks for if they 'll owe but Obedience upon that political account of his being a King assoon as they can but find out some blessed Expedient for the proving of him none that is Misgovernment Arbitrary Power Popish Inclinations and the like pretty Pretences to make him fairly forseit it why then truly all the Majesty vanishes like a Shadow before this New Light and if he can't hold his Scepter in his Hand with the power of his Sword why they have Metamorphosed Him into a common Man and may pluck it out with theirs And truly the Peoples Politick Capacity is such they will soon make their Kings uncapable when once they are grown so strong in the Field as not to fear it Here was the Rise of that Rebellious reasoning that run all indispensable Obligation of our Obedience to the Prince into the Capricious and Arbitrary Conjecture of the People whose Title and Deposition must depend upon his own Demeanor and that to be decided according to the diversity of thought which in a discontented Vulgar deserves the better Epithet of Distraction The good King would have a Right to his Crown as long as his kind Subjects would be pleased to think so and we have more than once found their Politicks have too soon made them uncapable to Govern and then deposed and murdered their very Persons for the want of this their politick Capacity I am sorry to say and posterity will blush to hear that such Seditious and sophisticated reasoning obtained even to the making Three mighty Monarchs in a most miserable manner to miscarry and it appears still too plain in their Prints and those too Charactered in Royal Blood that they never 〈◊〉 severing our late Soveraign's Person from his Crown till at last his Head too from his Shoulders I could not but with some passionate Digression reflect upon this pernicious Principle and so the best of it is I can be but pardonably impertinent but which I would apply pertinently to this Republicans and Parliamentary Proposition for their managing all State Affairs is one of the Consequences that may be drawn and which those Sycophants the Spencers did actually craw from this their damnable Doctrine for so they did conclude from it too as well they might That in default of him their Liege Lord his Lieges should be bound to govern the Affairs of State and what Newes now does this Devilish Democratick tells us Why the very Doctrine of two damnable Parasites whom themselves have condemned for above two or three hundred years agon who to cover their own Treason as they then too call'd it committed against the People and that but in Evil Counselling of their King invented very cunningly this popular Opinion to preserve themselves and please the Rabble they had so much 〈◊〉 And could after so many Centuries after so long a series of time the Principles even of their execrated Enemies by themselves too be put into practice and what is worse still shall the sad effects that succeeded the practising it so lately encourage our Seditious Libellers for its Reimpression if this most Rebellious Nonsense must re-obtain all their declaratory Statute the determin'd Treasons of their good King Edward may pass for a pretty piece of Impertinence they may do as once they truly did they may Fight Shoot at Imprison Butcher the Natural Body the Person of their Soveraign and tell us the Laws designed them only for Traytors when they could destroy him in his politick The same Laws make it Treason to compass his Queens Death or Eldest Sons and must it be meant of their Monarchs being Married in his politick Capacity as well as murdered or of his Heirs that shall be born by pure political Conception they might e'n set up their Common-wealth then if these were to be the Successors to the Crown But yet with the same sort of silly Sophistry that they would separate the Kings natural Capacity from his political did the same Seditious Rebels as Iremember make their own personal Relation to a politick Body Inseparable Rebellious Lumps of Contradiction shall not your Soveraigns sacred Person be preserved by that Power and Authority derived even from the 〈◊〉 and whose very Text tells us touch not mine Anointed and yet could your selves plead it as a Bar to Treason because perpetrated under a political Denomination and a Relation only to that Lower House of Commons that was then only an incorporated Body of Rebels and Regicides and this was told us by that Miscreant Harrison the most profligate the vilest the most virulent of all the Faction concerned in that bloody Villany the MURDER OF A KING the silly Sot had it infused by his Councel as Senseless as Seditious That it was an Act of the Parliament of England and so
them whether false or true Have they not heretofore answered touching Freehold even before their King and Council and a Parliament only Petition'd their Soveraign with all Submission that the Subject might not be summon'd for the future by a Chancery Writ or Privy Seal to such an Appearance but this they 'll say was the result of the Soveraigns Usurpations upon the Laws of the Land of a King Richard the 2d That did deserve to be deposed as well as the Articles of his Depositions to be read a King that forfeited the executive Power of his Militia for prefering worthless People and was himself of little worth or as the most Licentious and Lewdest Libel of a longer date has it a King that found Fuel for his Lust in all Lewd and uncivil Courses Now tho we have the Authority of the best of our Historians for the good Qualities of this Excellent tho but an unhappy Prince and who could never have fell so unfortunately had his Subjects served him more faithfully tho Mr. Hollinshed tells us never any Prince was more unthankfully used never Commons in greater wealth never Nobles more cherish'd or the Church less wrong'd and as Mr. How has it in Beauty Bounty and Liberality he surpassed all his Predecessors and Baker the best among our Moderns says there were aparent in him a great many good Inclinations that he was only abused in his Youth but if he had been Guilty afterward in his riper Age of some proceedings these Republicans had reason to reproach I am sure he was Innocent of those foolish Innuendo's those false and frivolous Accusations for which they rejected him viz. for unworthiness and insufficiency when he never appear'd in all his Reign more worthy of the Government than at the very time they deposed him for being unworthy to Govern But whatever were the vices of that Prince with which our virulent Antimonarchists would blast and blemish his Memory yet we see from the President that is cited the Sense of his Subjects did not then savor so much of Sedition as insolently to demand it for their Privilege and Birth-right which without doubt they might have pretended to call so as much as any of those the Commons have since several times so clamored for with Tumult and Insurrection and was indeed more to be condemn'd than any of those Miscarriages the Seditious and Trayterous Assembly that deposed the same Prince did ever Object for if their Free-hold can't be call'd their Birth-Right then there 's hardly any thing of Right to which they can be born And yet we see that the King and his Council had heretofore Cognizance even of that as it appears from the Commons Petitioning him against it and his Answer which was That tho he would remand them to the Tryal of their Right by the Law and not require them there to answer peremptorily yet he did reserve the power at the suit of the Party to Judge it where by Reason of Maintenance or the like the Common Law could not have its Course then we may conclude that the judicial power was absolutely in the King and this was also at a time when this Richard the 2d was but a Minor no more than thirteen years old and so this his Answer without doubt by the Advice of the wisest of his Council and the most learned of the Land And for this reason notwithstanding it is provided by that Chapter of the Great Charter none shall be Diseised of his Fre hold but by Lawful Judgment of his Peers tho the Right was tryed before that sort of Statute by common Law as my Lord Coke observ's upon it by the verdict of 12 Peers or equal men yet still I look upon the King to remain sole Judge in every Case whether Civil or Criminal for these Peers are never allow'd to try any more than bare matter of Fact and the Soveraign always presides in his Justices to decide matter of Equity and Law And those very Laws to which he gives Life too and whose Ambiguities he resolves themselves also sufficiently terrifie the Jurors from pretending to give their own Resolutions by making them liable to the severe Judgment of an Attaint if their Verdict be found false i.e. to have their Goods Chattels Lands and Tenements forfeited their Wives and Children turn'd from their home and their Houses Levell'd and their Trees pluckt up by the Roots and their Pastures turn'd up with the Plough and their Bodies Imprison'd A sort of severity sufficient one would think to frighten the Subject from assuming to himself to decide the judicial part of the Laws and for this Reason in all dubious Cases for fear of their bringing in a verdict False they only find the Fact specially and leave the determination of it to the King in the Judges that represent him And as this was resolved for Legal even from the Common Usage and Custom of the Land confirm'd as you see by several Acts of Parliament so was it maintain'd also by those very Villains that had subverted the Government it self and violated all the Fundamental Laws of all the Land for when Lilburn a Levelling and discontented Officer a Lieutenant of Oliver's Army was put upon his Tryal for Treason only for Scribling against the Usurpation for which he had fought and as he boasted to the Bench to the very butt end of his Musket against his Majesty at the Battel of Brainford and the mutinous wretch only Troubled and Disgusted because he had not a greater share in that Usurp'd Power for which he had hazarded his Life and Fortune when he came to be pinch'd too with that Commission of High Court of Justice himself had help'd up for the Murdering of his Soveraign and his best of Subjects no Plea would serve him but this popular one which the Lieutenant laboured in most mightily that his Jury were by the Law the Judges of that Law as well as Fact and those that sate on the Bench only Pronouncers of the Sentence and truly considering they were as much Traytors by Law as the Prisoner at the Bar he was so far in the Right that his Jury were as much Judges as those Commissioners that sate at the Bench yet even that Court only of Commission'd Traytors and Authoriz'd Rebels thought good to over-rule him in that point and Iermin one of the Justices just as Senseless in his Expression of it as Unjust and Seditious in the Usurpation of such a Seat in Judicature when no King to Commission him In an uncouth and clumsie Phrase calls his Opinion of the Juries being Judges of Law A Damnable Blasphemous Heresie never heard in the Nation before and says 'T is enough to destroy all the Law of the Land and that the Judges have interpreted it ever since there was Laws in England and Keeble another of the Common-wealth-Commissioners told him 'T was as gross an error
happy union of the Monarchy of the Saxons give me leave to observe this great Truth That from their first King Egbert to this Iron-side the last no less then 14 in number besides that Edward the first Edmunds Brother all successively Reign'd in Lineal discents of the immediate and next Heir of the Royal Blood and most of them too the Successors of the next immediate Brother to their present Prince no less than four several Brothers Sons to Ethelwolf the second sole Sovereign of the Saxons succeeding one another and then with what Face unless with one more lasting then I 〈◊〉 his corrupted History by being all Brass with what a Front but such an one can such a Libel and Imposture a Legend fuller of Lyes than ever was penned by Papist antient or modern Monk offer at such a part of our History for the dispossessing the present Brother of his King But this Popish Plagiary fetching most of the Materials of his Monumental Treasons from a Club of Jesuits the Triumvirate of studious Traytors that forged for the subverting the Succession their damna-Doleman no wonder if he be as full of falshood as those copyed Ignatians whom he transcribes or the Founder of them the Devil All the shadow that he has of any thing of Election was that of the first Saxon King Egbert whom he would have no way related to Brissicus the last King of the West-Saxons but whom a more worthy Author proves from Westminster's own words that he was the sole surviving branch of the Royal Stemm and that he was banisht into France and that only for fear of his Right But granting then what he is resolved to suppose still right Reason will confute his Impertinence even in complying in unreasonable Concession the Question here is of the Succession of our Establisht Monarchy And he brings us an Instance before the Monarchy was Establisht owns that the History of that Heptarchy was uncertain and yet very certainly determins the point of his Election and that we must take too upon an ipse dixit of this Dogmatical Historians for his being no way related he cites just no body and while for his near alliance you have the Authority of so many That other only broken Reed that in all these Reigns he has to rely on and that like AEgypts too is ready to run into his side so false so dangerous to trust too which is Edreds being crown'd in the Minority of his Nephews when all the Historians say it was only for their being Minors And the diligent Baker says he was not then made Protector only because that Authority was not then come into use but crowned as King with purpose to resign when the right Heir should come of age But lest his Modern Authority may be not sufficient with those that malign any thing that makes for the Monarchy let them consult even the most of the Antients and they all agree they were only set aside for their Nonage But this Royal Protectorate soon expired as if Providence laboured to prevent an Vsurpation and provided for the right Heir who succecded in his paternal Inheritance before arrived even to the Romans civil age of Puberty 14. And the malicious Perverter might as well say as great a stress as you 'll find afterwards he truly does upon Richard the thirds Butchery and Usurpation the breaking of the Laws of God and Man for a Crown All the difference is Here were only two Nephews for a while debarred there Butchered and shall such bloody Miscreants pass upon the World for credible Authors who for robbing of a Divine-right can cite you Murder and for the breaking of our Humane Laws the blackest Crime in the Declogue And since this Antimonarchical Zealot has shown himself thus elaborately studious to rake every musty Record of those Reigns for a Rebellious remark give me leave only from the same times to make this last and Loyal Observation where Providence seemed to shew it self remarkably concerned for its crowned Head and that in the subsequent Judgment upon the Proto-Martyrdom of the Saxon Edward as well as what we suffered since for our Martyr'd Charles tho there 't was only for anticipating a right by blood but ours a bloody Usurpation of those that had no right at all Ethelred's passage to his Reign was but before his time and the Almighty's yet the Government suffered for it as many Pangs till it quite miscarried within fifty years the new Monarchy fell quite asunder rent and torn by two several Conquests He himself meets with the Defection of all his Nobility forc't to raise his Danegelt and his Subjects into Rebellion by it prepared his Navies only to be shattered with a tempest or consumed with Fire both Elements and Heaven it self seemed to conspite to make him Miserable Famine and Mortality were the dismal attendants of his Wars the Depredations of Invaders would not allow peace the Reign that begun in a Murder ended in a Massacre The incensed Danes soon invade him the perjured Edric falsely forsakes him he languishes a long time as well he might under Guilt and Misfortune and to put the only period to his days Miseries and Kingdom together Dies You see how little success this Author met with among the Saxons Sovereigns for altering Succession how much of Imposture his Reader may there meet with in him and you shall as soon see he deals as disingeniously with the Danes And here thorough his double diligence this Parliament Historiographer has not omitted an Argument for his purpose much of the same strength as those that he has used viz. That Knute was no kin to Edmund or Ethelred And the Dane no way related to the Line of the Saxon that is the poor conquered England was not Consin German to Denmark the Conqueror and yet the Title of the latter was preferred and their King acknowledged ours I can't conceive what necessity of Relation an Invader needs to the poor Prince he Invades and whether that be not a pretty sort of an Argument for altering Succession to say the Kingdom was Conquered Swayn had before cut out a fine Title for his Son with the Sword The North West and some of the South part of England had submitted frightned with his revengeful Cruelties which their own had provoked Canute himself after his Fathers Death lands as soon at Sandwich with a Navy of two hundred gave our English a great overthrow possest himself of what Swayn had before harassed the West and because the Nobility favoured only whom they feared and set him up in Competition for the Crown whom they could not keep down from being a Competitor ergo therefore the Succession must not run in the right Line and why because here it did not if more absur'd Inferences can be drawn from matter of Fact or greater Solecisms from Historical Observation I 'le forfeit all the little Right I have to Reason and with an Implicit Faith
our Crowned King He is there girt by the Arch-Bishop with a Sword takes fealty both of Clergy and Lay makes a Truce with the King of France and all this before ever he came into England to be Crown'd or Elected And shou'd we yield to this perverse Imposture the signification of his word for which he has so long labour'd yet all this while we find his very People more willing to Elect him that had an Hereditary Right than a spurious Invader that had none at at all and did actually Confirm him in his Succession unless the more powerful Usurper terrifi'd them from their Loyal Intentions and truly the mistaken Gentleman might have as well prov'd that he was the third time Elected too when after his Imprisonment that he suffer'd from Henry the Sixth the German Emperor after he came home and had held a Parliament at Nottingham he was again recognis'd for their King and Crown'd at Winchester But what can be better Evidence of the precedency that was allow'd to the nearest of blood in a Lineal Descent then this Princes Care he took in appointing his Nephew Arthur to Succeed him tho he had a Brother of his own to whom he had shown a liberal largess of his Love when he began to Reign in bestowing on him no less than half a dozen Earldoms a good part of his Kingdom Certainly this Earl John was nearer to him in Blood and Affection and then what cou'd move him to this Testamentary Disposition but the more nearness of the other to the Kingdom and the Crown But in spight of all Adoption and Right JOHN as great an Usurper as any laid hold of the Scepter and held it too only as some of our Tenures in Law by primer occupancy he had his Brothers Army in the field and that was then enough to have made a King of a Cromwel an Hewson a Brewer or a Cobler powerful Arms that filence any Law But still the Nobility were for maintaining the Right of Succession in Arthur and as they call'd it the usual Custom of Inheritance most of his Provinces in France stood firm to him and so did the King of it and had Fortune favor'd him upon whom for the most part it frowns the Justest pretender he had not been made a Prisoner to his Uncle to whom he was a King and been murder`d by him after the Siege of Mirabel But the Barons rebellious Insurrection soon aveng'd the Barbarous Butchery and but bloody consequences here too attended the Debar'd Right He is forsaken of all his People and the French Kings Son a perfect Forreigner invited in for a King and his end at the last as unnatural as the death he gave to his Nephew And here upon the Coronation of this intruding King John the factious Historian rehearses the Clause of Hubert the Bishop of Canterbury's Speech that declar'd the right to the Crown to consist only in the Election of the People but disingenuously omits the very reason of the self same Prelate who when he was pincht with the Interrogatory why he would preach up such pernicious Principles own'd it more a Design of Policy than the Sense of his Soul But to give him a perfect Rowland for his Oliver he will find in the Life of Richard the Second a better Bishop making of a more Divine Speech and asserting the Right of Succession more 〈◊〉 than ever this designing Metropolitan was able to confute But that worthy Prelates Doctrine did no way countenance our Authors seditious Observations and so directly different from his Huberts Harangue that he might well pass it by without reading and which must certainly have 〈◊〉 him into Blushes to have read Henry the Third a Prince too young to know his Right much less to be able himself to take Possession of it was presently upon his Fathers Death Crown'd King Certainly upon the Consideration of his Hereditary Right or the Testamentary Donation of his Father whom Paris says he appointed his Heir as his First-born made the Kingdom swear Fidelity to him sent his Mandatory Letter under the Authority of his Great-Seal to the Sheriff's of the Counties to the Keepers of his Castles that they shou'd all be intent upon the Business and upon his death they show'd themselves as ready to perform it and what can the most factious Pen make more of this than an Acknowledgment of Hereditary Right especially when the same Author in the beginning of the young Kings Reign says they only came together to Exalt him to the Throne of his Father and not one word of their Suffrages or Election therefore what could not be proved from matter of Fact must be suggested with an Innuendo and because the good Earl Marshal in a perswasive Speech exhorted them to adhere to their lawful Sovereign it imply'd the Consent of the People requir'd if such an Assent shall make the Kingdom Elective 't will be hard to proveany Hereditary for all people that do not actually Rebel and Oppose must in that sense be said to Consent and Elect and when ever our Kings are Crown'd 't is so far with the Consent of the people that they do not interrupt the Coronation But can he prove in any of his pretended Elections much less here that ever in England they balloted for the Crown or drew Lots for the Kingdom that they had ever any certain number of Electors as in Germany or carried it by Majority of suffrages as in Poland ' tho I believe some of them would make no more of his Majesty than a Bourrought Representative or a County Knight and 〈◊〉 allow him the Freedom of a Pole But with what face can he urge it here when the whole drift of Pembrokes Oration was only to satisfy them the Succession belong'd to the Son and that the French Usurper Lewis would be the ruin of the Realm which Speech was so effectual too that several of the Principal of the Barons not withstanding that open hatred to his Father in spight of Obligation of an Oath to Lewis they still thought their Loyalty and Allegiance more obliging and revolt from the French-man till all at last deserted of all he abjures his claim and the Kingdom together After he had been first routed by Land at Lncoln by Pembroke the Protector and his fresh supplys at Sea near Dover by Hubert the Gouernour And the bold Speech of that stout Souldiers to this powerfull Prince when he demanded Dover on the Death of King John was a better Evidence what sense the people had of a Lawful 〈◊〉 than he from the Marshals can evince that he succeeded by Election and against the Laws of Descent and all that he can pertinently draw from the Protectors Oration is that an Infant King did not speak for himself But if ought be a blot in his Succession 't is what this praejudiced Historian I am sure does not care to Hit and that is the weakness of his
pardonable faults of this unhappy Prince tho our Law say A King can have none much less be punisht for it when he can do no wrong The greatest that Daniel condemns was his mighty favouring of his Minions Gaveston and Spencer's in Opposition to his Barons and must it be criminal to a King to have a Friend But however in his History calls it the first Example of a deposed Prince no less dishonourable to the State than to him 〈◊〉 calls the Bishop of Hereford that then was busied in the Resignation but a Mischievous Embassador and pray what was the Fate of those that were the first Leaders of the Rebellion and the most mutinous The mighty Duke of Lancaster was by his own Peers condemned to be Hang'd and Quartered and was only Beheaded and several Barons besides and afterward Mortimer the Queens own Minion and Favourite was impeached in Parliament of Edward the Third for making Dissention between the late King and Queen for murdering of his Sovereign and accordingly was drawn Hanged and Quartered for it with several of his Adherents But as Unanimous and as Clamorous as they seemed for his Deposition the greatest Contenders for it as some of our Historians affirm lamented it with regret when it was done and Stow tells us that when the Queen understood her Son was Elected she seemed to be full of sorrow as it were almost out of her Wits and the Son lamented too and swore that against his Fathers Will he would never take the Crown And after all what succeeded this most unjust Deprivation and Imprisonment of a King but what still is its immediate subsequent the Barbarous Murder this was verified in the following fate of King Richard this was the unfortunate Consequence of our late confined Martyr Mattrevers Iron soon followed the firsts Imprisonment in Corse and Berkley Gastle Exton`s Poll-ax as quickly dispatcht the Second at Pomsret and the Block at White-Hall too soon attended the Confinements of the last Martyr in Carisbrook and Holmby confirming even with his last breath and verifying in his latest Blood this too fatal Aphorism that a Death soon follows the Deprivation of a King and that there is in his own words but a little distance between the Prisons and the Graves of Princes And now the next that enters this Theater Royal is Edward the Third a Son too forward to accept of a Crown before 't was his due But notwithstanding this Rebellious Instance he hath given not so formally chosen as to make the Kingdom Elective for their very chusing of his Son and that the Eldest insinuates that in spight of their obstinate dissobedience their resolute Rebellion they were still toucht with a sense of right and priviledge of Primogeniture and the small remainders of Majesty the bare Right they had left him awd them so far as to think it necessary to palliate their too open villanies with the formality of a Resignation neither would the Son accept it neither was he proclaimed or Crown'd till his 〈◊〉 had resigned and let the bold audacious force they used for it lie at their Door that vindicate it his resigning entitled his Son and he had a sort of Right in Civil Law besides Hereditary pro derelicto Here 't is pretty remarkable the fine sort of Observation he makes on the Bishop of Canterbury's Text vox Populi that it was the voice of the Almighty too and impiously upbraids the sacred Dust of their own Martyred Lawd for placing a Divine Right in Kings when some of his Predecessors had so well lodged it in the People but did not the Impudence of his Brow almost exceed the villany of his Heart his Conscience as hard as his Fore-Head or both he could never thus inhumanely reflect on him whom they butchered too as barbarously and that with such a Reflection that flies in his own Face when the very Opposers of this pious Praelates Opinion verifyed afterwards his Prophetick fear and by the placing this Divine Right in the People sent assoon his sacred Majesty to follow the Praelate But can ever Wretches show more industrious Malice towards the Government when they shall close with the Doctrines of their worst of Enemies and which they would be thought so damnably to detest to do it an Injury cite you the Authority of the most Zealous Catholicks when it will make against the Monarchy yet baffle and burlesque the very Bible when it makes for it the malitious Miscreant knows the Clergy then were all bound by their Oaths besides their Opinions to be the Bigots of Rome He knows the Popes supremacy then would not admit of the Kings He knows the pleasing of the People was then the best Expedient for the promoting the Pope that from them came all the Penny 's that paid them for their Pater-nosters and that this beast of Babylon against which our Zealots pretend too as much Brutal rage then only trampled upon the Necks of Kings not only had Her stirrops held by them but rid upon the very backs of Princes and that only because the poor People were so Priest-ridden would he have had that Popish Prelate preach to them the Kings Supremacy told them he was not to be toucht because jure divino when themselves make it the Doctrin of their Church to dethrone them certainly such Sycophà nts dissemble when they cry up the Reformation that rely so much upon the Religion of those times before they were Reform'd The Bishop as he thinks having now pretty well asserted the Peoples supremacy by making them Divine he brings in as prettily Polidore Virgil proving them to be all Princes so that we have now but one Subject left and that 's the King but by his leave the Governments bark must be wrackt in a Rebellion and a storm before they can come to Reign like so many Trincaloes in the Tempest The Gentleman sure read Shakespear instead of Virgil and thinks our Isle enchanted too but to be serious in matters of Blood and Right and that when both Royal could any Person of sober sense be so simply sollicitous as from an Author forreign unknowing our Constitutions calling some of our Subjects Principes to suggest their Supremacy their Superiority we know as well as he what he means by it or what he must mean that they were some of the chief of the Realm and will that make them Rulers too the Latin Idiom sometimes applies the word Princeps to subordinate supremacy as well as to those that are sole Supream But even the Authority that he cites for this silly Suggestion and others P. Virgil himself is sufficiently secluded from being Authentick by Sir Henry Savill The next Factious Insinuation that follows is that John De Gaunt this Edward the Thirds fourth Son but the Eldest surviving disputed the Succession But this as a Learned and Loyal Author observes so far from Truth that he was at the latter end of his Fathers Life
in their pretensions to a Crown to which they were not 〈◊〉 no great Inducement certainly for any one to bepersuaded to personate the Royal Heir to set up for a Lambert or a Perkin only for their misfortune and fate Lastly I shall conclude my remarks upon this Kings Reign with an Animadversion upon a Paragraph or two that conclude his piece very pertinent to this place since it relates to the times of which we treat and that is the resolution of the Judges upon the Case of this their King that the Descent of the Crown purged all his defects and attainder This their opinion he refutes as Frivolous Extrajudicial and here Impertinent but I hope to show this Point a most material one the Resolution to be a good Judgment and their reply much to the present purpose First sure it was a matter and that of a high Nature to know how he was qualify'd to sit in the House that was to preside in it as the head And tho he might in some sense be said to have won the Crown with Arms yet he knew it would wear much Better sit much Easier if setled and establish't according to Law and tho a Conquerer that has the Sword in his hand can soon capacitate himself to sway the Scepter yet he 'l soon find the most regular Proceedings tend most to the Establishment of his Reign this made Henry the Seventh who had a Triple Plea for the Crown and that one by discent from the Lancasters consult his Oracles of the Law how far an Attainder past in the Reign of the Yorks would still taint his Blood and make it less Inheritable Secondly their Resolution that all preceding defects were purg'd in the discent was a Judgment both equitable and reasonable for 't was sure but equal that an Heir to whom an Inheritance and that ofa Crown was allowed to discend should be qualify'd to take too for if he was a King no Bill of Attainder could touch him that was past too when he was none And if he was no King all the concurrence of the Lords and Commons cou'd never have made him an Act for his being so there being no Royal Authority to pass it into Law and nothing by the very constitution of our Government can be made a Law without so that such a resolution certainly was highly reasonable and unavoidable that that should purge its own defects which no power had perfection anough to purge wou'd he have a King pass an Act with his two Houses for the reversal of his own Attainder or the two Houses reverse the Attainder of their King If the first the allowing him to pass such an Act supersedes the end for which it should be past and makes him de Facto capable whom they would capacitate if he allows the Latter then he must an Interregnum too extinguish that Monarchy for a while of which the very Maxim says the Monarch can't dye and place that Supream power in the People which all our Fundamental Laws have put in the King Thirdly this Resolution is very pertinent to the present purpose to which 't is commonly now apply'd and that is the Bill of Exclusion But his passion and prejudice would not permit him to Examin the little difference there is between them For certainly that ability that can discharge any attainder is as efficacious for the voiding and nulling any Bill that shall hinder the descent for a Bill of Exclusion would have been but a Bill or an Act of the House for disabling the next Heir And an Attainder can do the same and is as much the Houses Act and to distinguish that in an Exclusion the Discent it self is prevented by a Law makes just no difference for whoever is Attainted has his Discent prevented by a Law too and that antecedently also before the Descent can come to purge him so that they only differ in this formal sort of Insignificancy In an Exclusion the Discents prevention would be the sole Subject of the Bill in an Attainder it is by Consequence and Common Law prevented and so the disability being but the same in both the defects by the same means may and must be purged The president the Judges cite to justify this their Opinion is not only applicable to their Case for which 't was cited but much more so to the very project of Exclusion which I 'll prove too from this Sophisters own reasoning It is the Case of Henry the Sixth who by Act of Parliament was Disabl'd to hold the Crown which was as particular an Act for the depriving him of his presum'd right as this their Excluding Bill would have been of an unquestionable one Town one of the Justices that debated and argued this point vouch't this H. 6. Case as an Attainder but was Corrected by the rest and told that he was not attainted but Disabled to hold the Crown but even that that was void assoon as he came again to wear it and seem to conclude that then à fortiori that an Attaindere would be purg'd away by the Descent and sure if this was then Law and that even for the Line of Lancaster who had Defects of Title to be purg'd besides of tainted blood 'T is strange to me why a York now and such an one too in whom both those so long disputed Titles Terminate and Concenter should be Disabl'd for ever by that Expedient which was resolv'd unable to prevent the Succession so long agon For Argument that an Attainder hinders the Crowns Discent has this presumptious Interpreter of the Law brought the most impertinent piece of Application that the defect of sense could suggest and so has as little reason as Truth to tell us that this Judges Resolution on Attainder is not to the present purpose pertinent for that a discent is insufficient to purge attainted Blood he cites the Sense of the King of France and the Learned advice that was given him to send his Son Lewis Because King John's Blood was corrupted but he might as well have told us because John is said to make over his Kingdom to the Moor we are all now Subjects to the King of Morocco the true reason of the French mans sending of his Son is what will at any time incapacitate the Crowns Discent and that is the Rebellion of the Subjects and yet those very Barons that Rebell'd never insisted on his corruption of Blood never made it so much as a Plea for their Rebellious Insurrection nay themselves thought him so far from being disabl'd by it that they prefer'd him even to the very right Blood which was incorrupted in his Nephew Arthur but allowing it then Law this resolution that such Corruption is purg'd was made long since and must now be as Legal tho the Contrary before had been never so much Law so that here he has only taken the pains to be impertinent and that too for the telling of a Lye But as his Villanous
last mention'd might be Modern and I believe that Rome and Athens were never heard of when Sodom and Gomorrah were burnt with Brimstone then he is forc't to give himself the Lye and the word of Truth it self God and the Bible and that he does in excepting Moses from the number of those that had the Help and Information of any Constitution Antecedent as the Founders of the foremention'd Monarchies that were Establisht so long after might well be supposed to have had for their Instruction and yet does that sacred Penman inspired by God himself almost Coaeval with the World give us a clear account of all Original Government from the time that there was a Man to Rule or a Beast to be governed and that too of an absolute Monarchical Empire So that all what the sublime Speculations of this refin'd Politician can cavil at is only that we can't give him an account what was done before Adam what truly was the Constitutions of their Government and whether the Prae-Adamites liv'd like our English-men under a true Monarch or like the Venetian Republick under an insignificant Duke For this certainly must be the Consequence of his Inconsiderate Assertion that Original Government is unknown at the same time that he excepts Moses from the Number of those that Establisht a Particular one which by the Consequence of his own Concession must be the first General and Original unless he allow another before it dis-believe the very Bible and give his God the Lye But he is not the first Author that has fancyed Prae-Adamites and writ about them too Besides his Brother Heathen the Stagyrite as great a Philosopher as his Plato tho not so Dogmatical makes it more than an Hypothesis one of his Principles that our World was Eternal and then indeed we shall be puzzled for this Original of Government in General for lack of a Creation when the Bible shall be baffled and Books of Moses at a loss But I wonder since he allows that Primitive Penman to be one inspired by God and excepts him too from the Number of those that have transmitted an account of the Original of particular Governments which must imply that he did of that which was General and so contradict his first Position That we wanted such a Tradition that yet all the while he won't take notice what is the account he gives and what 's the first this Moses mention'd without doubt he knew the very Consideration of it would confute him and that he would be confounded by the very First Chapter of 〈◊〉 And therefore he presently takes it for granted that Politicians 〈◊〉 tho none but such as himself that nothing but Necessity made the first Government But then what does he think of the Dominion that the Almighty gave in express Words to his created Man was it only to extend to the Beast of the Field and Fowls of the Air and every Living thing that then moved upon the Face of the Earth or ought it not in Reason be applyed to those Beings too that should be hereafter the product of those Beasts and that of his own Loyns but even God himself confirm'd the Donation of this power afterward to make it more sure made him Ruler In an 〈◊〉 Subjection over his Wife Eve and afterward subjected Abel in a subordinate one to his Brother Cain 'T is strange and prodigious to me that Men professing Christianity Protestants even to a fault in being fill'd with Fury instead of a sober Zeal yet should so warmly contend for the Doctrines of profest Atheists and pursue with heat the Principles of avow'd Papists Does not Mr. Hobbs teach us our Original State was that of War and this Political Atheist tells us as much that Man was first born like a Beast 〈◊〉 to prey upon one another does not Bellarmin declare by Nature all Men were equal and this Pseudo-Protestant informs us Every Man has a Right to every thing What can this Harmony mean with the profest Foes to all Religion and avow'd Enemies of our own but that these Sycophants dissemble with their very God when they declare for his Worship and would close with the Devil for its Extirpation 'T is plain they do with the Positions of the rankest Jesuites and the Fiends in Hell can't be made more black than themselves do commonly paint that Society whom I am afraid as the Indians do their Gods they only make the more ugly for Adoration In the next place all Paternal Right must be laid aside that 's a thing so ridiculous as not to be mention'd But I hope 't is only so because inconsistent with his Principles when we have so many Texts of Scripture for its Confirmation and Aristotle that learn'd Heathen tho a Native born even in a Republick places that Original of all Despotical power in the heads of Families and I can't 〈◊〉 where a man that has a Power to 〈◊〉 it over some few has not a share of Sovereignty too as well as he that has an Empire over many more The Government of those Families and the setting their Father a Ruler over them in their several Tribes was really from God as appears plain enough from the Old-Testament and that without doubt made Paul to make this of a larger extent and Interpretation in the new when he tells us expressly that all Powers are ordain'd by God and there are none but what are from him But they 'll say this may be applyed to any Democracie which is a Power too But then it may be as boldly replyed That they are not of his Ordination for we have the Authority for the sole Sovereignty of every Father of a Family from the very first Original of the World and that of their Popular Supremacie never commenced but by some Division in a Tribe or Family and even then they made some Head in that Division which was no more than what we now call Rebellion and Vsurpation The first Original of Monarchy he resolves into the Corruption of the Times which the preposterous Statesmen ought rather to have made the product of their Purity at least of their desire to be bettered and purg'd for allowing what he says some better Government tho the greatest Opposers of the Divine Right grant that of a King to be the best might degenerate upon the disorder of Times and Debauchery of Manners into Monarchy which the resolute Republican is resolv'd shall be the worst yet still his own very Argument shall contradict his reasoning and in spight of his Villanous Principles prove it the best For if manners be deprav'd under another Form of Government and that the People grow so careless as to neglect the Constitution and Frame of it as not worth the keeping and so uneasie under it as to admit any Usurpation and Intrusion of a sole single Soveraignty certainly they must have a very bad Esteem of their preceding Government to suffer it to be utterly abolish't
they think fit And also not to dissolve them till all their Petitions were answered that is till they are willing to be gone But then will I defie the Gentleman to shew me the difference between this their desired Parliament and a Perpetual sitting do not these industrious Endeavours for such a perpetuity of them plainly tell us 't is that 's the only thing they want and that they are taught experimentally that that alone run the three Kingdoms into absolute Rebellion and ruined the best of Kings and can as certainly compass the Destruction of the present But I 'll tell the lump of Contradiction first the words of our greatest Lawyer and then his own Cooke says none can begin continue or dissolve a Parliament but by the Kings Authority Himself says that which is undoubtedly the Kings Right is to call and dissolve Parliaments 'T is impertinent to labour to contradict that which he here so plainly confutes himself the Statesman being so big with his Treasonable Notions so full of his Faction that his Memory fails him makes him forget his own Maxims and makes his subsequent Pages wrangle with the Concessions of those that went before His next Observation is a perfect Comment upon his Text that had in it implicit Treason before he tells us in Justification of the Barons Wars which all our Historians represent as a perfect Rebellion That the Peers were fain to use their Power and can he tell me by what Law Subjects are impowred to Rebel He calls it arming of their Vassals for the defence of the Government That Bill by which they would have associated of late that I confess had it past into Act would have made Rebellion Statutable And they themselves must indeed have had the Sovereign power when they had gotten their Sovereign to suffer himself to be sworn out of his Supremacy they might well have armed their Vassals then when they had got his Majesties leave to commence Rebels and Traytors for the Protection of his Person and the Preservation of his Crown and Dignity But these humble Boons were no more 〈◊〉 that Bill must have begged and these kind Concessions no more than was expected from the Grant of a King so Gracious a Petition that might well have been answered like that of Bathsheba's by bidding them ask the Kingdom also The Barons standing in open defiance to the Laws tho they stood up too so much for them He calls the Peers keeping their Greatness and this is the Sovereign Power the Rebel would have them again set up for to be great in their Arms as well as Quality and demand with the Sword again the Prerogative of their Kings and the grant of the Regalia which in their preposterous Appellations was abused with the pretence of priviledge and right and which the force of the Field can soon make of the greatest 〈◊〉 and wrong But in the very next Page 't is expounded clearly what has may and must be done in such Conjunctions that is to your Arms. He tells us after they had obtained the framing of their Charters and I think they were as much as the most condescending Monarchs could grant or the most mutinous malecontents require Then arose another grievance 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 for This was the Intermission of Parliaments which could not be called but by the Prince and he not doing it they ceast for some years to be Assembled if this had not been speedily remedied The provoking Rebel for certainly he is as much so that Animates a Rebellion as he that is actually engaged in it and is by Law so declared tells us the Barons must have put on their Armour again and the brisk Assertors of their Rights not have acquiesc'd in this Omission that ruined the Foundations of the Government After all the kind Concessions of the Prince the putting him upon that which was the taking away of the very remains of Royalty puts me in mind of one of our late Expressions of a popular Representative that could declare in open Assembly as attested by some of the very Members of it that tho this their Bill of Exclusion were past which was more we see than the most mildest Monarch could grant or even our House of Peers sure the better part of our Nation could in Modesty require yet still there was more work to be done and a Reformation to be made in the Church as well as the State The Patriot was prepared to lanch out in such kind of Extravagancies and told the truth of the Plot before his time had not calmer Heads interposed and cool'd his hot one into common Sense several of the Speeches spoken in Parliament for which its Publisher deserves to be Pillor'd if not Authentic and True and brought before them on his Knees at least for his Presumption if they are It being here as Criminal to Print Truths at all times without an Imprimatur as 't is to tell it without leave even inseveral of those Speeches Publisht in that Paper I reflected on in the beginning where the Pedantick Author has exposed me in the Tail of his History that lookt like the Narrative of a Rump There are as bold Expressions of as dangerous Designs for at the end of one of their Harangues the beginning of which is only marked with R.M. and its Author may be loth to let any more Letters of his Name to be known you have these following Lines If at the same time we endeavour to secure our selves against Popery we do not also do something to prevent Arbitrary Power it will be to little purpose I think nothing can prevent that better than frequent Parliaments and therefore I humbly move that a Bill for securing frequent Parliaments be taken into Consideration can any thing be more Expressive than that the Bill so much clamour'd for was only the burden of the Song and that the Ballad it self must have been all to the Tune of 41. when Arbitrary Power never ceased its Cry till the Parliament was made Frequent its Frequency never sufficient till standing and perpetual which proyed too as dangerous as a standing Army never restless till it had really raised one too and the Kings Head from his Shoulders and can these worst of Criminals make it a Crime to make the Nation fearful of Parliaments when there are such Speech-Makers in it I shall to such Accusers Faces defend them to be formidable not out of any Apprehension of fear for my self for whenever such a Seditious Senate their Commons become dangerous again to good Subjects the safety of the Government must be but in as bad Condition But it may well terrify even a Crown'd Head and frighten him from their Frequency when some of their most popular Members have been since found in an actual Conspiracy for pâ—lling the Crown 〈…〉 〈…〉 suffered publickly for Traytors Sir G. H. I do agree a Bill for Banishing Papists may do well But
incorporated to the King himself His true Treasurers and the most profitable Instruments of the State And without doubt this great part they had always in Publick administrations made them of old so much esteem'd that in all Rolls and Acts of State they were mention'd with so much reverence and respect certainly had they been no constitution allow'd of by the Fundamental Laws of our Land they would never have been transmitted to posterity with such veneration to their Memories and that too through every Reign and all the Records of Time let them have but the benefit and priviledge of a Common Burrough and let their President an Office as old as King John's Time and that by Letters pattents but have as fair play as one of their Port-Reevs prescription would incorporate them into the Government as well as entitle those to their Franchises 'T is an absolute Contradiction to Imagin that Rolls then the very Parliaments Acts or Opinions in Transcript should have recorded them so Honourably for their Publick Administration were they not allow'd by the people so much as to be Ministers for the Publick good and such Honour was given them too by our Ancestors such Semblance of Soveraignty to their Persons that their Houses had in some sense the self-same privilege of the very Kings Palace and Verge wherein if a blow was given it was punisht with a Fine the loss of a good Summ of Money as in the other of a Hand And is it not at present Treason to destroy them and can Absurdity it self imagin that the Laws which are made always by those that Govern would make such provisions for those that were no part of the Government And lastly to prove this proposition of our Republican but a Rebels Plot and a fair progress towards a Rebellion I 'll shew this presumptious projector how vainly he presumes upon his parts and Invention that he is a double Plagiary not only borrow'd this 〈◊〉 project against the present Privy Council from these proposals of our Seditious Senate in England but his very Quarantia of Venice was set up long before he could for an Author by those Zealots that were so resolutely resolv'd to Rebel in Scotland and he shall see those Daemagogues too those Devils of Sedition look't upon it even then as a praeparatory project and the best Expedient for their Invading of the Kingdom and the Crown Their Edenburgh their Metroprolis as well as ours here was then the Seat of Sedition so truly great that it's Faction and Villany was Commensurate even with it's very Walls And those too when Casually fallen were not suffer'd to be built as if they would have let the World known by praediction their Ominous Treason was to extend further 't was here that the Sycophants at the same time they pretended so much for their Kings preservation that they protested against the pious Prince's Proclamation only for the dispersing of that dangerous Rabble that seem'd to denounce with an Omen what too fatally follow'd his Death and Destruction his Majesties sincerity to them and their Religion was repeated in it often with assurances but what was as Sincerely promis'd from a King by these Monsters of the People was as Rebelliously Ridicul'd with scorn and derision and that the Government might be satisfy'd with a sure report of their Sedition they made those Heralds that proclaim'd their Princes pleasure to witness how much it displeas'd his Rebel Subjects and in defiance to their very Faces read their own Protestation Big thus with Rebellion and Labouring with their teeming Treason at last they are fairly deliver'd of the same Rebel Brat this Republican would adop't for his own a QVARANTIA they Covenant and agree and 't was time to Vnite for a Justification of those Villanies which nought but a Combination could defend for erecting four principal Tables and 't was time too to set up their own Councils when they had so Seditiously resisted their Kings To pursue the Contempt of this Proclamation which by his Majesties Council and Command was publish't for a further Violation of the Regal Authority they set up this truly Popular the first of their four Councels to consist of their Nobility the second of the Gentry the third of their Burgesses and the fourth of their Ministry and the Decrees of these their principal and general Tables as they call'd them as if as Universally to be receiv'd as Moses his Two of Stone what they did and was approv'd of by the General one the Choice Flow'r of all the Four was to be forc't as the Peoples Law but far I am sure from the Fundamental one of the Land from this their Rebellious assuming of the Soveraignty in their pretended Councils as they call'd them too but in truth a Convention of Conspirators proceeded presently the Renewing of their Negative Confession their Band their Covenant impos'd on all sorts of People with artiside force and Blood it self And can a Test now establish't by Authority and Law be look't upon an Imposition even by those that impos'd Oaths Vnlawful and Rebel'd against both it being by them expressly declar'd in two several Acts that all Leagues of Subjects amongst themselves without their Princes Privity to be Sedition and their Authors and Abetters to be punish't as movers of such And what did this Venetian Government terminate in in Scotland but a plain Confederacy to confound all and tho the Civil and Courteous contriver of our Ruin and Subversion minces the matter with making his Majesty to Exercise his four Magnalia with the consent of these four Councils 't would puzzle his Politicks to tell me the distinction between them and those principal Tables of the Scot what should confine them from Confederating against their King instead of Consulting for him what would signifie his Majesties having a president among those of his own placeing when every one of them would be their own Masters and out of his power to displace what should hinder those from protesting with their old Rebellious Assembly in Scotland against all their Kings desires intentions and Inclinations for the publick good while they presume their own Maxims the wisest and their measures the best and to tell us that these are to give Account and to be answerable to such a Parliament who chuses them is to say a Sidney is the best Judge of the Misdemeanor of a Nevil most qualifi'd to answer his Quaere whether this project be not a better Expedient than the Justitia of Arrogan or the Spartan Ephori or to tell us one that has suffer'd for Treason to a Monarchy is the fittest to Try him that would betray it to a Common-wealth The second Proposition in the Parallel is that Affairs of State be managed by the Parliament or by such Councils as they shall appoint The true Spirit the Life the Soul of Sedition that informes and animates the whole Body of the Faction speakes here the
one that the granting them these Regalia would not only be an Act to bereave him of his Crown and Dignity but would pass his very Person into the Donative a yielding up of his last Breath the making himself his own Executioner as well as a Betrayer of his Trust This Project is only the pernicious Principle improved the late Rebels falsely assumed His Authority for the Fighting against His Person but the prevailing upon him for these Destructive Grants would make Him truly Fight against Himself In all the Reigns of the three following Henries their Soveraign's Supremacy was still 〈◊〉 and that over Parliaments too tho one of them was but an Usurper on the Crown and then I am sure as great an one upon their Privileges and tho themselves had placed the First in the Throne themselves also acknowledged the Regality of the Crown of England to be Subject to none but God To the Second they acknowledged that to Him only belonged the Management of Foreign Affairs with Foreign Princes To the Third that he could constitute County Palatines and grant any Regal Rights per Letters Patents And these were Matters and Affairs themselves then declared they could not pretend to tho this Gentleman would now have them or their Counsel manage all In Edward the Fourth and the 〈◊〉 time 't was always received Law then made and should I hope hold still that State Affairs were to be manag'd by the Prince for it was then allowed for Law That if all the Common People of England should break a League by agreement with any Foreign Nation it shall still be reputed firm and unviolated if without his consent And in his very Sons that Succeeded resolved by all the Judges and Serjeants that he was the only Person in the Kingdom that could do no wrong which sufficiently declares him above all them that could and then who so fit for all absolute Power in all publick Administrations than whom the very Law presumes always to do Right and whom Reason tells us must be most impartially concerned for the publick good having no dependance upon any Superiors from whom an Apprehension of Fear or hopes of Favour might prevail upon to degenerate into that servile and sordid Complyance to prefer his own private Interest before the publick good Whatever Presumption the Law had of it then I am sure they have a Prince that justifies the Supposition now and then the most ungrateful Paradox and against Sense it self for our Seditious Souls to suggest and insinuate his Real Intentions for their Good to be nothing but Design and Plot upon them for Ill. An ORDER of Council with such Sycophants is turned into a trick of Court And their Kings Proclamations are 〈◊〉 only because they cannot conveniently resist as if the whole Board was packt only to please a designing Prince But base Villains your selves know that his aims have ever been for the publick Peace and Prosperity even at the same time your dangerous disorders have made it almost inconsistant with his own safety and security You see your Soveraign Sit and Act in a Sphere and that only He where Favour cannot charm or Fear frown into Compliance And who can be supposed then besides him less prejudic'd or more concerned for your good Would you have your Gentlemen of the Shop and Yard take their Measures of the State too We have experimented already that those made the very Government a Trade also and by those your very Properties and Lives too would be bought and sold we too lately saw some Symptoms of that state Distemper when some of the Seditious Souls had but gotten the Government of a single City and that but under a Soveraign their Supream and sure 't is an Argument unanswerable that those Salesmen of his Prerogative would assoon Barter your Properties See the sad experienced result of all the Democracies since their first Institution what was left the poor Lacedaemonians upon putting in Execution that popular Project their Petalism or Impoverisht Athens her self upon such another Order of her 〈◊〉 why both were beggar'd of their Nobility the Scum the Scoundrels of the Town turn'd the Mighty Massinello's of the State The Tod-Pole Train the product of those beggarly Elements Mud and Water Lorded it even over all the Land And those Rulers naturally retaining in this Medley this Mixture of Sway the Native Principles of that Abject Matter from whence they came still as mean as the one and restless as the other could never reduce them to composed States till they had recalled the good Governours they had Banisht before you know all this is too true and your selves too vile Caitiffs have owned it in Prints Lastly Let your Lords too be allowed for once your only as well as it is your beloved Government Let Aristocracy for once obtain for the best and Banish your Monarch set up that Idol and fall down to the Gods of your own Hands that good Government must still be of many still of as much divided Interest there would still be many then to mind the making their own Hay in the fair Sun-shine whereas should your Prince perjure himself for the minding only his private concern and neglecting the publick good which he must do if ever he is Crown'd where an Oath is administred for his very disavowing it yet still here would be pursued but the Interest of a single Person there of so many When the rash and unadvised Romans had upon that bandied Argument the Dissoluteness of their Tarquin the popular president of the Party for the Banishing of all Kings as if the Practice of a Rebellious Rome against a single dissolute Prince and that so long since could with the same Reason prevail at present for an extirpating the Government even under the best of Princes yet this very precipitous Act of Rage and Rashness was afterward even by the relenting Romans as much repented of and their Error best understood in their following Misfortunes and of which they were soon sensible too soon saw it in their subsequent sufferings for the first Frame of Government they constituted after this Expulsion was the Consular and one would think that being but of two of the 〈◊〉 among them that it might have lasted as indeed the best sort of Aristocracy coming within an Ace of a Monarch a Duumvirate yet even from those they suffered more than from the first Constitution they had abolisht their more immoderate power broke the Laws more immoderately than the Lustful Licentious and Lewd Monarch they made to fly with his Fugitive Government We shall in some other place consider the restless Revolutions they ran through from their turning out this Monarchy till they tumbled into it again This serves only to let us see that publick Administrations even in the hands but of two of the best of the People are not always the best managed What pray better can be expected when the
to sit in it forc'd to acknowledg his Soveraign SVPREAM in all Causes over all Persons And were their Memberships to be modelled according to the Common-wealth of this Plato their Oath must be repealed or they perjur'd Their very Constitution would be Inconfistant with his Supremacy they must manage and Command at the same time they Swear to submit and obey Was there ever a more full acknowledgment of Power and Prerogative than was made to King James upon his first coming to the Crown And tho I confess they took upon them to manage Affairs in his Son and Successors time yet this was not until they had openly bid him defyance to his Face and actually declared War against His Person then they might well set up their Votes for Law when they had violated the Fundamental ones of the Land yet themselves even in that Licentious and tumultuous time could own that such Bills as His Majesty was bound even in Conscience and Justice to pass were no Laws without his Assent What then did they think of those Ordinances of Blood and Rebellion with which themselves past such Bills afterward so unconscionable so 〈◊〉 Here it was I confess these Commons of this pernicious Projector took upon them the management of the State their Councils their Committees set up for regulating the Kings Then their Pillor'd Advocate that lost his ears as this with his Treasonable Positions should his Head Publisht the very same Proposal in his pestering Prints the very Vomit of the Press to which the dangerous Dog did in the Literal Sense return to lick it up still discharing again the same choler he had brought up before in a Nauseous Crambe A Wretch that seemed to Write for the Haberdashers and Trunk-makers instead of the Company of Stationers that Elaborate Lining the Copious Library for Hat-cases and Close-stools that Will with a whisp whose fuming Brains were at last illuminated for the leading Men into Boggs and Ditches Rebellion and Sedition The Confusion of others only for the confounding of himself for a King for the Parliament for the Presbyters for every thing for nothing but that ONE thing Scribble Compare the power of his Parliaments and his Vnparliamentary Juncto the meer Lumps of distorted Law or Legal Contradiction with the 25th of Edward He first deposes his King and even there then finds his Deposition Treason Their Divine Baxter never baffled himself more with the Bible and the Gospel than this Elaborate Legislator with the Statute and the Law William Writ against Pryn too in one Page proves his King Supream in the other his Parliaments Supremacy the most Mutinous Member would needs be Loyal when it was to late and the most Malitious Miscreant at the Pen Publisht his Memento when his Money with his Membership was sequestred from his own Home as well as his self from the Parliaments House and then palliated it with a piece against his Majesties Murder I the more Liberally enlarge upon this because his party the Presbyter would appropriate to themselves from some 〈◊〉 Papers the Vindication of their King but what I am sure in sincerity was their own Revenge They the Scot and the Todpole Spawn of both that Independant made use of unanimously the Defence of their Prince for the Destruction of his Person and then the differing Daemagogues with the very same Pretences strove to put upon each other that is both alike full of the same falshood both alike fancyed their own Integrity they seemed to Labor for the two sublimated Vices Hypocrisie and self-conceit whereof the one made them twice Villains the other double Fools And this Confounder of Paper as well as the People Publisht then ‖ the very same Principles this starch't Republican has proposed now for new Politicks of State Pryn and Plato differ only in this one Labour'd to make Law speak Treason the other Sense Lastly were not the Parliament very tender of this last this present Princes Power and Prerogative when they enacted a new Oath to be taken by all in Office for the Renouncing the Trayterous Position of resisting his 〈◊〉 with his own Authority And this Rebellious Proposal of our Republican is to make even the Parliament it self to make use of his Authority even for an Usurpation upon his Prerogative and when once they come to Manage that they may be sure they 'll be his Masters too and I hope 't is now in some Measure proy'd even in the several particulars I undertook should be so that our Monarchs had heretofore an absolute Management of Affairs without an Interfering of Parliaments which then had not so much as Being and which were since they had it never called as their very Writs express it but to consult that they never offer'd to set a Council over their King much less themselves as this popular Pedant calls it to Manage his Militia and demonstrated this as was designed from Prescription even beyond Chronicle from the Laws of every Reign and my little Light of Reason All the following Propositions are as much against Reason and Law for the third is that the Judges be nominated by Parliament which as it would divest the King of part of his Supremacy so it would make themselves in effect both Judges and party for those then their own Creatures would have the Exposition of those Laws which themselves had made The Law allows all the Four Courts at Westminster to be all Courts by Prescription and then let them tell me to whom belongs the power of Electing those that are to preside in it to the Kings of England that can prescribe to their Government even from the very Britains before Caesar ever set Foot in it neer 1700 Years agon and with whom their Courts of Judicature were ever Coeval or the Constitution of a Parliament that first within this four hundred years could be said to have a Being and so that which themselves would now controul had a Priority even in time to their Existence for near 1300 Years It is called the Court of Kings Bench Let them name the Judges it must be no longer His but the Parliaments 'T is Rehellion in them to assume it for they must at the same time too take the Soveraignty the Supremacy and 't is that such Seditious Proposals must aim at and truly do for 't is expresly declared for Law that the Justices of the Kings Bench have Supream Authority the King himself sits there in them as the Law intends if the Parliament can chuse their Kings Representatives they can their King too and make the most Hereditary Kingdom Elective before the Reign even of Edward the First the Chief Justice of this Court was created by Letters Patent 't is out ever was and will be out of the Parliaments power to create per Patents even a petty Constable 't is the King alone that by these his Letters can constitute Courts
modelling of the Church and in that our modern Republican agrees with our Old Rebels for the depriving the Bishops of their Votes That was one of the Projects was set afoot as the very forerunner of our former Troubles that was publisht over again in several Papers and Pamphlets now besides in this very piece and could they condemn our Fears of a Subversion of the Government when their Libels in about 80 lookt only like the new Editions of those in 41 as if printed Rebellion was to suffer but a 〈◊〉 You shall see how they began with the Bishops just before the last War in their Libels and then how of late they began to War upon Episcopacy again in their Papers and Pamphlets you shall see how the Parliament Espoused the Peoples Quarrel to that Hierarchy then and how near our late House of Commons was for falling upon the Prelacy now Leighton a virulent Scotchman led the Dance with a Zeal like that the Nation it self shewed afterward against that Apostolical Order he told the People plainly they must Murder all the Bishops And in his canting Phraseology Smite them under the fifth Rib. 'T is true the Government of Church and State stood yet so strong upon its Basis tho shaken with an undermining Plot that it dared to punish such an Execrable Villain with the Pillory and sentenced he was in the Star-Chamber to be stigmatised cropt and slit and tho the Parliament had not openly declared themselves against this good Government of the Church yet they had shown such Symptoms of their Disaffection to it that this Impudent Libeller could presume to make them his Patrons and present them with his Plea And I ha'n't found in all their Journal any Order for so much as the censuring him for such a piece of Presumption To exclude the Bishops from Voting in their Assembly the Confederates of Scotland drew up a Libel against them one in the Literal Sense full of Scandal and Reproaches But the denying them there their Rights in Parliament was soon seconded with the Robbing them of all too they had in the Church whom they had excluded they soon 〈◊〉 and then abolisht utterly the sacred Order so did also within two years after the good Parliament of England begin with the Prelacy too Pennington with his packt Petition of Prentices presented to them their Abhorrence of that Hierarchy the cunning and counterfeit Commons that Honse of Hypocrisie seemed a little dissatisfyed with an Alteration of the Church Government it self that is they did not care to pluck it up presently Root and Branch but fell upon another Argument somewhat more plausible tho to the Zealots less pleasing but what in truth was but Introductory to the same thing they more deliberately designed that they might proceed somewhat like Senators soberly to Sedition and that was about the Synod and Convocation Canons and Constitutions Ecclesiastical which they soon resolved to be against the Fundamental Laws of the Land But these Lay-Members were only mighty loth the Clergy should here have their Representatives as well as the Laick they must otherwise have seen that such a Resolution would upbraid them to their Faces with a Lye for this their Court of Convocation was as much founded upon Law and more too perhaps than even that of the Commons themselves who with their inconsistent Votes with Contradiction it self condemned it Exclude the Clergy and the very Foundations of your House must fall Did not former times allow you Representatives that every one might have an Hand in the Composuion of that which he had an Obligation to obey Banish the Bishops your Assembly and tell me by what Proxies the Church shall be represented and what shall tye her to the Observation of those Laws to whose Constitution she gives no consent For a Thousand Years before they had a being there were such Synods Assembled never called but by the King 's Writ and they have no other Authority for their own Sitting and might as well have Voted that their own Assembly as indeed it was afterward was against the Fundamental Laws of the Realm Prerogative of the King Property of the Subject Right of Parliament and did tend to Faction and Sedition And tho those Canons and Constitutions were streightned and limited in Henry the Eight's Time and it was provided that none for the future that had not the Royal Assent should be put in Execution yet such Reverence and Respect had the Parliament of those Times which I think was made up of a better sort of Reformers than what past their suffrages for the setting aside this Synod that notwithstanding that Limitation they put in an express Proviso that such Canons as were made before that Act so long as they did not contradict Law should be still in force after and this was at a time too when they were so far from being the Bigots of Rome that they were reforming from Her and acknowledged their Kings Supremacy even in several of those Convocations tho whatever Religion they were of Common Reason cannot make it a Crime the countenancing of the Churches Right but these Violators of her Privileges soon discovered their Design upon her Patrimony too for in the same Session and that soon after they that thus set aside the Churches Synod sent up an Impeachment of Treason against its Metropolitan and that by the Hands of Hollis a hot-headed Member whom his Majesty could have made appear and within a year after did demand for a greater Traytor too That Honoured Hollis that lived so long and so lately to Murder the Bishops once more in their Peerage as well as Person 〈◊〉 but having gone so far what they had scribbled down before with their Libels they soon damn'd with a Vote And in the same Year past that Bill that their Spiritual Lordships should have no suffrages in the Senate of Lords And when they were come to this once to deprive them of their prescrib'd Privileges and their Legal Rights to send twelve of them to the Tower only because they would not tamely forego the very Church's Birth-right but entered a Protestation against the betraying of their Trust you might think their Order it self tho never so Primitive never so much Apostolical was not like to be long liv'd for in the very next Year tho it was the good Kings giving one when Star-Chamber was abolisht the High Commission put down Ship Money relinquisht with six or seven several Acts besides for disclaiming Privileges still his Seditious Subjects had so little Sense of his Goodness that even in that very season of Grace a * Bill was brought in for Abolishing this sacred Order Root and Branch 't is true 't was then husht up in the House the provident Patriots understood how to time it better they had not yet come to covenanting and concluded with the Kirk but as soon as they had framed their Holy League
brought into the Conspiracy and was not Her present Majesty sworn into this Did they not declare the King seduced by Evil Councellors and impeached several of the Seducers Were not several of the Council now impeached and declared Seducers of the King Were not the Judges then impeacht and Jenkins clapt in the Tower Were not Articles drawn against Scroggs and some of the rest declared Arbitrary Were not the Spiritual Lords excluded from their Right in Temporals and did they not now again dispute the Bishop's Right Were not the Ecclesiastical Courts then to be Corrected and that now taken into Examination Was not Manwaring and Montague censured in the House Thompson and several of our Clergy now brought on their Knees Was there not a Councill of Six whom the good old King impeached for bringing in the Scots and have we not had Six of the Senators that have suffered or fled Justice for the same Conspiracy Was not the Militia aimed at now and taken away then Was not the House of Peers Voted useless and now Betrayers of the Liberty of the Subject Lastly did not the whole House take the Covenant at St. Margarets and the Major part to have subscribed an Association now and last of all Did not the Junto at Westminster pass an Act for the King's Tryal and sign a Warrant for his Execution and now a remnant of a disbanded House propose horrid Things that made even some of the Conspirators fly out upon which ensued a discovered Assassination of their Soveraign and was there no danger of a Parliament no sign of a Protestant Plot Only because the King did not leave Whitehall and go down to Hampton Court because there was no Essex in the Field as well as the Plot no King secured at Oxford as well as in the Isle of Wight that there was no High-Court erected at Westminster but only a better expedient found out at the Rye If these are Arguments to render an House of Commons unsuspected and a Plot of the Protestants unimaginable if because here are perfect Parallels of Proceedings as even as if drawn with a Compass Mathematical and which according to their proper Definition I could draw to infinity yet still there must be presumed a great Disparity between the Subversion of the Government that was actually compast and the Destruction of it now that was so lately intended If there be the least Difference between what led to the last setting up an Usurper an Arch-Rebel in the Throne and these late Machinations of Hell to retrieve the same Usurpation bating but the Providence that interposed against its Accomplishment Then will I own what this Villainous Author will have taken for granted That those that have the least Suspicion of Parliaments are the greatest Villains that a Plot of Protestants proved by Confession is still a Paradox and that my self deserve what he has merited a PILLORY The Pages that he spends in declaiming against trifling Wit supersedes all answer and Animadversion which himself has prevented in being Impertinently Witty upon the very thing he condemns The stress of his Ingenuity is even strained in the very declaiming against it And Settle has not so much answered Himself as Hunt here his own Harangue That Gentleman sate down a while for his second Thoughts but this preposterous Prigg sets himself in his own glass at the same time a Contradiction to his own Writings His Observations upon the perjuries of the Popish Priests is so severe that the absolute Argument of their Guilt is drawn from their very denyal their Superstition I abhor as much as the Treasons they dyed for but I pity their Obstinacy which till I am better satisfied I shall not condemn his inhumanity is hard which unless he had good Assurance by Christians must be blamed there is not a Criminal of our latter Conspiracy I will declare Guilty beyond his own Confession and then there is not one that dyed but whom I can well think Guilty His next Observation that is worth Ours Is that upon the Legislative Power and there he makes each of the two Houses to have as much of it as the King and that I deny with better Reason than he can assert that the two Houses are concurrent to make a Law I 'll willingly grant 't is my Interest 't is my Birth-Right But that which I look upon to be truly Legislative is the Sanction of the Law and that still lies in the breast of our Soveraign If Mr. Hunt that in many places is truly Pedantick will rub up his Priscian the Grammatical Etymology will make it but Legem ferre and then I believe his House of Commons will be most Legislative 't is their Duty their Privilege rather to bring and offer up all Bills fit for Laws and the King still I hope will have his Negative in passing them the Commons pray petition to have them past and that implies a consent Superiour to be required that can absolutely refuse the King can with out Parliament charge the Subject where 't is thought for their Benefit and allowed to dispence with a Statute that concerns his own resolv'd by all the Justices the King by himself might make Orders and Laws for the regulating Church Government in the Clergy and deprive them if they did not obey 22. Ed. 3. says the King makes the Laws by the Assent of the Lords and Commons and so in truth does every Act that is made and every clause in it Bracton says the Laws of England by the Kings Authority enjoyn a thing to be done or forbid the doing These are Arguments that our King sure has somewhat more than a bare Concurrence in the Legislative If not he must be co-ordinate and then we have three Kings which is what they would have and then as well may three hundred I love my Liberty better than our Author who has forfeited his yet I remember when too much freedom made us all Slaves The Extent of the Legislative Power is great but then I hope 't is no greater than the King shall be graciously pleased to grant it shall extend And then I hope it must be allowed that Equity and Justice must always determine the Royal Sanction too which cannot of it self make all things Equal and Just should it stamp a Le Roy vult at the same time upon Acts inconsistent and contradictory upon such as were against the Law of Nature and all Reason such would be de facto void 'T is hard to be imagined such Error and Ignorance in so wise an Assembly but what has but bare possibility in Argument must still be supposed but that it has actually been done will I prove possitively and not with some of their illogical Inferrences suggest that a thing must be so only from a bare possibility of Being Be it therefore enacted by the Kings most excellent Majesty and by the Lords and Commons in this present Parliament Assembled 't was then first those
had not the Queen if such a thing could have been expected from a Sister of that Church so Zealous done much better had she refused the Bills of both Houses brought her for introducing the Pope's power and Supremacy your selves Seditious Souls reproach this Royal Assent with Reflections so scurrilous upon her Memory that the worst of Monarchs could never Merit and then only give but Loyal Ones leave to think that your Excluding Bill tho never so much the General Desires might have been as much cursed by posterity when it had entailed upon it Misery and Blood the common Consequences of a debar'd Right To come now after this Ecclesiastical point of the Church to that Civil one of the State that other thing this Lawyer Labors for the Descent of the Crown Shall the Peoples general Desires in this too terminate the Will of the Prince why then that Monster of Mankind as well as Monarchs did mighty well too to pass that Murdering Bill presented by both Houses of Parliament to make good his own Title to the Crown by the Butchering of those Babes in the Tower for no less could be expected when it was once taken up by the Tyrant than their Destruction for the Maintaining it so that this Peoples Desires dispatch'd them in the Senate before ever they were strangled by Tyrril in the Tower Had it not been a much greater Honor to the Prince to have refused such a Barbarous Bill than turned Usurper and a Butcher for it's acceptance Had it not left a less Blot in our English Chronicle as well as upon the Nation less Blood Did not both Houses exhibite a Bill even for the making Elizabeth the best of their Queens a Bastard And does Mr. Hunt say this desire of the People too did mighty well to prevail as it always ought upon the King Did not that Royal Assent so blacken his Person and brought the Nations repute so low that the very Protestant Princes left him out of their League whom they had designed for its Head and look'd upon our England as a lump of Inconsistancy whom such Vnanimous Leaguers could not Trust And was it not in his Reign That a Zealous Papist said It was the Parliaments Power to make a King or deprive him a fortiori then a Popish Principle to destroy or exclude his Successor But as bold as this Gentleman thinks himself when he dares to say Never any King denyed to pass those Bills which the People pitcht upon to present 'T is none of his own Politick asseveration tho it be but a piece of Sedition It is no more than what a Seditious Senate told their King long agon A Senate that sate brooding on the pure Elements of Treason and of which Pryn himself was a principal Member A Senate that sowed so much Sedition in one age that all the Succeeding will hardly eradicate A Senate that sate drawing out the Scheams and Platforms of a Common-wealth A Senate that assumed to themselves indeed the Legislative the Nomothetical Disposition of the Law but they proved such a Confounded sort of Architects in the State that they drew a perfect plan a confus'd Ichonography for Rebels to build upon their Babel Those told us in plain Terms what these more cautious Coxcombs insinuate with a silly Circumlocution That the King is bound by His Coronation Oath to grant them all those Bills their Parliament shall prefer And that they gather from their contradictory conclusion that bandy'd Banter they have Box'd about in both Reigns for almost these two Ages the VULGUS ELEGERIT I am sorry to find these Seditious Souls not only to want Sense but Grammar Lilly would have told them more of the Law and his Constrctuion and Concord made a better Resolution than their Coke upon the Case But as the People when they have got the Power will soon decide on their side the Supremacy so these Times did here assoon turn the Tenses and transfer the past Laws into the Future and 't is no wonder that those that did the Statutes of their Prince could dare to break the Head of a Priscian Is not the perfect Tense much more agreeable to Sense and Reason here than the Future The question is Whether it shall be meant of those Laws the People shall Chuse or have Chosen I won't object here Our Kings being absolute and compleat Monarchs without so much as taking such an Oath without so much as being Crowned which is the Time it is to be taken tho of that the Law has in several Cases satisfied the most Seditious and so resolved their silly Suggestion The resolution I shall give is the Strength of Reason and that must at least be as Strong as the Law Let it be but once allow'd That their King by this Clause is obliged to pass all Bills that shall be brought why truly then he Swears with an implicite Faith to Repeal all the Laws if the People please for the bare possibility in such a sort of Argumentation may be supposed and we as well imagine for my Lord Coke tells us we have had Mad Parliaments such a Senate may prefer Bills for the Repealing all the Old Laws as well as for the passing any single New and I am sure 't is no more than what has actually been done in one since that Learned Lawyer lived even to the Subversion of all the Statutes of the Land so that this positive Oath in their sense may Labour under an implicite contradiction for while he swears in the latter Clause to confirm all the Bills they shall bring It may be extended to cancel all Custom and Common-Law he is in the former sworn to defend Mr. Hunt's General Desire of the People may be for the Repealing the 35th of Edward as well as that of Elizabeth and leave no Law in the Land to punish Treason as well as Recusants only that they may commit it with impunity for one of those Bills has twice been brought into the House and both may be to save their Bacon And should the King with their Elegerit be obliged especially so mild an one with an anticipated Mercy to Pardon Villains 〈◊〉 the cutting of his Throat and leave no Law to punish perhaps a Rumbold or the Ruffians at the Rye certainly were his Right not in the least Divine this would contradict all Sense and Reason Suppose Richard the Second took this Oath as well as the rest of his Successors since and afterwards the general desire of his Parliament we all know was that he would depose himself Senseless Sots was that King sworn too even in his Coronation to confirm his own Deposition In short must not this senseless Suggestion put upon the Royal Authority the greatest absurdity against all Sense and Reason must it not make him swear to confirm those Laws that have not so much as BEING and that before he knows whether they will be good
of Allegiance what it's form was of old and what he would have implyed in the word HEIR therein mentioned to whom we swear and here at the same time that he would deliver the poor people as he pretends from the sad delusions of Error and Sophistry does he put upon them the greatest Falsehood and fallacy and the quaintest Sophism a Quirk in Law viz. That the King's Heir in possibility cannot be meant in our Oath of Allegiance because 't is a Maxim forsooth in our Law that no Man can have an Heir while he is living And with this silly Solaecism a sort of Sense merely Sophisticated this Elaborate Gospeller in the Law lays himself out in the pains of two or three Pages to prove the prettiest Postulate which we would have granted but for an asking that in this our Oath we did not swear Actually Allegiance to the D. of Y. And truly I am much of his opinion too in that point and that he was not then our Soveraign tho he had a possibility to Succeed But can ever a more Senseless Inference be made by a pretender to Sense or a more Jesuitical Evasion by the most dexterous Manager of an Oath First I would ask him what he thinks was the Design of its first Imposition what was the Reason of Inserting including the Kings Heirs and Successors in those Oaths of SVPREMACY and ALLEGIANCE Was it to perpetuate or acknowledge an Hereditary Succession or to warrant an Exclusion of the Right Heirs Did the Parliament design in the framing them the Lineal Discent of the Crown when they Swear to defend the Authority of the Kings Lawful Successor as well as his own or did they then reserve to themselves a power of declaring who should be his Successors by Law But if the Divine Gentleman would have reason'd pertinently and to the purpose tho it would have been but an absurd sort of Reasoning this he must have inferr'd that because we there swear only to be faithful to the Kings Heirs when they come to Succeed therefore this Oath non Obstante we are left at Liberty to prevent any Heir from his Succession and then I would have this Political Casuist tell me What would be the Difference between this Evasion and a direct Perjury for we swear to be faithful to the King's Heir that shall Succeed him and truly in the mean while we make them our own suffer only whom we please or just noneat all to Succeed for by the same Law Equity and Reason that we interrupt the Succession of one we may that of one thousand too and still be true to our Oath if we abolisht the whole Line of Succession for then those Juglers with a turn of hand and a Presto will tell us very readily why truly we swore to obey his Majesties Heirs and Successors but must needs be absolved now since there are none that do succeed And such were the Casuistical Expositions of some of our Late Divine Assemblies even in this very point when they had Murdered their Prince and denounced Death to His Heirs and were urged with their Allegiance But is not this first Perjuring themselves to Commit a Crime and then justifieing its Commission by their being Perjur'd May we not as well Murder one that would be the Successor and then plead our Innocence we did not suffer him to Succeed or truly did they not design such an Impious and Execrable countenancing of the Villany when they Associated for his Destruction and swore to destroy him would not they then too have Absolved themselves thus in Johnson's Sense and the Jesuits from any obligation to this his Majesties Heir because the Law Maxim did not yet allow him to be so and they had helpt him now from being so for ever Will a Nice point of this his Law resolve does he think as tender a Case of Conscience This his Law makes it but Manslaughter where a person is kill'd without Malice Propense but will this be no shedding of Blood to be required at his hands by the Judge of Heaven because he had his Clergy allowed here upon Earth can he Prescribe with the Laws of the Land to impunity from the Decalogue and tell the Almighty some Killing is no Murder Here his God his Saviour is invoked in a Solemn and Sacred Oath upon the Gospel and one that should be a Divine Expositor of both consults upon it the Readings of Mr. Hunt and a Resolution of the Common Law here he Swears to the plain meaning of the Words without any Mental Reservation whatsoever and yet this Mungrel in Divinity means now to take it in his mind according to a ereiv'd Maxim in the Law And this Libeller of the Primitive Christians looks like an Apostate that was as Primitive who kept pointing to the papers he put upon his Breast while he was Swearing to others that he held in his hand But yet I dare Appeal even to his own Breast who without doubt had often taken these Oaths being graduated in an University and Ordain'd a Divine tho unworthy of both whether the Words Heirs and Successors were not understood by himself of such as were to Succeed by an Hereditary Right by Birth and Blood to the Crown and whether that he did then Reserve to himself only such as did Actually succeed by Consent of Parliament and whether he did not think that by them he was not only obliged to obey those Heirs when they came to the Crown but also to do all that in him lay to promote in the due time their coming to wear it certainly to confine their Sense only to those that shall de facto succeed is but Swearing an Implyed Allegiance to any Rebel or Vsurper and the word Lawful that still accompanys Successors will not mend the Matter with such men for all is presently Legal and just with them that has but the shadow of a Parliamentary power for it's pretence And I am well assured That those that would have thought such an Exclusion just and equal with their King 's passing it would have thought it as Legal could they havesate till they had made it pass without The good old King at first disputed his Militia as hard with them and who could have believed any sort of men could have thought it the Parliament's without his Consent But assoon as the Rebel House had made their Ordinance for the Seizing it which of those Miscreants did not think it as much Law And the more than probable project at Oxford shrewdly Insinuates they would have warranted an EXCLVSION without their Kings leave Legal had they been allo'w but a further progress in their Vnwarrantable Proceedings But as much as Mr. Johnson Triumph's with this his Maxim of the Law as if he were the first Divine that had discover'd this deceitful Evasion this Jesuitical interpretation of his Protestant Oath Tho he and his Hunt and all his Lawyers in the Hall
this Be it enacted by the King Lords and Commons for that is the General Stile of the Enactive part of most of the Statutes of those Times and this was most agreeable with their mighty Notion of his Majesties making but up one of the THREE that so they might the better conclude from the very Letter of their own Laws That the TWO States which the Law it self implyed now to be Co-ordinate must be mightier and have a Power over their King whom the same Laws confest to be but ONE and the Reason why the forms of their Bill and the draught of the Lawyers and the Lower-House might be past into Act without any Alteration or Amendments of this Clause was I believe from a want of Apprehension that there ever could be such designing Knaves as to put it in to that Intention or such Factious Fools as to have inferred from it the Commons Co-ordinacy For the Nobility and Loyal Gentry that 〈◊〉 commonly the more Honesty for having the less Law cannot be presumed so soon to comprehend what Construction can be drawn from the Letter of it by the laborious cavil of a Litigious Lawyer or a cunning Knave and therefore we find that those Acts are the least controverted that have the fewest Words and that among all the multiplicity of Expressions that at present is provided by themselves that have commonly the drawing of our Statutes themselves also still discover as many Objections against it to furnish them with an Argument for the Merits of any Cause and the Defence of the Right of their Clyent at the same time they are satisfied he is in the wrong And for those Enacting forms of our Statutes whatsoever Sense some may think these Suggestions of mine may want That some Seditious Persons got most of them to run in so low so popular a Stile in the latter end of King James and Charles the first 's time such as Enacted only by the Authority of the Parliament by the Kings Majesty Lords and Commons yet upon the Restauration of Charles the Second the Words With the consent of the Lords and Commons were again reviv'd and afterward they bring it into this old agen With the Advice and Assent of Lords Spiritual Temporal and Commons according to the form of Richard the 3d. and Queen Elizabeth that resolv'd them to be the THREE STATES and this runs on through all the Acts of his Reign and even in several of them the Commons humbly beseech the King that it may be so enacted I thought it necessary to bring home to our present tho most profligate time as much Acknowledgement as possible I could of my Kings Prerogative from the Laws of our Land and the very Statutes themselves because that some great Advocates for the power of the People some times pretend to plead for them too from Acts of Parliaments tho I think in this last lewd and Libellous Contest against the Crown that lasted for about five year in that Lustrum of Treason there was but one that was so laboriously Seditious so eminently popular as to endeavour to prove the Peoples Supremacy from Rolls and Records and Acts of State and for that recommend me to the good Author of the Right of the Commons Asserted tho I should rather approve of such an undertaking when endeavored to be done from the tracing the dark and obscure tracts of Antiquity and the Authority of a Selden than the single Assertion of a Sidney and the mere Maxims of some Modern Democraticks that have no other Foundation for their Establishments than the new Notions of their Rebellious Authors and that ipse dixit of such Seditious Dogmatists But I am satisfied too that this Gentleman who has laboured so much in vindicating the Commons Antiquity and their constituting an essential part of our Saxon Parliaments did design in it much more an Opposition of our Antient Monarchy and the Prerogative of the Crown than a mere clearing the dark foot-steps of our Old Chronicle and a real defence of Matter of Fact and the Truth And this is too clearly to be prov'd from the pestilent Pen-man's P-tyts own Papers that were publish'd at such a time when there was no great need of such an Asserting the Commons Right when themselves were more likely to have Usurp'd upon the Crown and as Mr. Sidney and his Associates would have it made themselves and the People Judges of their own wrong For to see such a task undertaken at a time when we are since satisfied such dangerous designs were a-foot looks only like a particular part of that general Plot and Conspiracy that has been since discovered and that all sorts of Pens were imployed as well as all Heads Hearts and Hands at work for the carrying on Mr. Sidney's OLD CAVSE as indeed all this Gentlemans Works tended to for which the Almighty was supposed so often to have declared and signaliz'd himself and illustrates only this That there was not any Person qualified for undermining of our Monarchy either from his Wit or Parts Boldness or Courage from his Virulency in Satyr or his Knowledge in History from his skill in any Science or Profession but what some or other of the most eminent was made Serviceable to this Faction and contributed his Talent to the carrying on the Design according to the gift and graces that they had in their several Abilities to promote it neither can this Gentleman think himself libell'd in this Accusation unless he would give his own works the Lye for who but him that had such a Design for the subverting our Monarchy would at a season when the Succession of our Crown was struck at in the Commons Vote a Succession that several Laws of our Land have declared to be Hereditary even by that of God who but one so Seditious would not only have encouraged such unwarrantable Proceedings which was the late Kings own Words for 't in such an Assertion of the Commons Right but in that too brought upon the Stage several Arguments from our History several Presidents of our Soveraign's being here Elected by their Subjects when they might as well too tell us That our present Soveraign was so chosen because the Question was put to the People upon his Coronation but yet this elective Kingdom of ours did this Laborious drudg of Sedition drive at too Does he not tell us William Rufus and several others were Elected that is Henry the First King Stephen King John tho I am satisfied that consent of the Clergy and People they so much rely upon was nothing more than the Convention of those Persons that appeared upon the solemn Coronation or at least the Proclaiming of the King Themselves are satisfied all our old Statutes clearly confirm'd the sole Legislative Power of the Prince and therefore they won't when they are objected to them allow them to be Statutes at all because made I suppose only by their King but so my Lord Coke
11. * Non est Haeres Viventis * And even that is allow'd by Hunt in his Postscript pag. 74. Vid. Vote of the house in the Journal 1648. Vid. Form of Oath of Allegiance and Supremacy ‖ Vid. King's Speech to the Parliament there * Julian pag. 19 20. Page 19. * A Treatise perswading Obedience in Lawful things to Authority tho unlawful Printed London about 1649 Ibid. Page 10. Ibid. Page 12. * Vid. Also a Religious Demurrer about submission to the present Power Printed London 1649. * Julian pag. 12. Anno Mariae 1. Julian p. 12. * Vid. 〈◊〉 ‖ Julian p. 11. * Wilkinsou of Court 〈◊〉 4th Edit p. 298. * Jul. p. 20 21. Jul. p. 20. * Non est Haeres Viventis * 25. Ed. 3. cap. 2. Jul. pag. 20. * Vid. Britton Coke cap. Treason ‖ 3. Ins. l. 1. p. 9. * My Lord Hales Pleas of the Crown Ist. Edit †25. Ed. 3. * Vid Jul. pag. 19. * Vid. Jrlian the Apostate Post. p. 47. * Brief History of Succession Page 〈◊〉 †22. Aug. 1554. ‖ Vid Burnets Abridgment 2d pt 3. l. * Baker p. 329. * Jul. p. 39. pag. 35. pag. 33. 38. Exclusion †Vid 〈◊〉 Inquiry B. R. * Jul. Vid. Argile's Declaration his Majesties first Speech De jure magist p. 94. Quaest. 10. Jul. p. 7. Edictis Legitimis Rogatis p. 101. Publicum Religionis Christanae exercitum quispiam eorum nunquam concesserat p. 101. * 〈◊〉 meretrico Sanguinariā p. 98 99. Ut illi non fas sit cam pro arbitrio suo sine causae Cognitione abrogare sed eadem Authoritate tantum inter cedecente quā abinitio sancita suit pag. 100. page 18. That Author laughs too as well as Julian at the Martyrdom of the Thebaean Legion * Jul. p. 5. An Liceat resistere Prinicipegem Dei violanti Ecclesiam vastanti 〈◊〉 Juni Brut. quaest 2d ‖ De jure Magis trattuum * 1. Sam. 31. †2. Sam. c. 2. ‖ Sam. c. ult †2. Chro. c. 21. 2. Chron. c. 33. * Junius Brutus quest 2. p. 37. * Haec scriptura nobis definiet quod populo Judaico licuit imo quod in 〈◊〉 fuit nemo negabit quin idem populo Christiano c. Junius Brutus quaest 2. * Junius Brutus Vindiciae contra Tyrannos 1577. †Ficleny de Mag. 1576. ‖ Harringtons Oceana †Needham's Merc. Pol. ‖ Plato Redivivus †Sidney's Systeme * Vid. his Tryal p. 23. ‖ Vid. Paper at his Execution * Vid. Tryal pag. 23. ‖ Generali Lege decernitur nemidem sibi esse Judicem 6. 3. 5. 1. * Nemo Idoneus testis in re 〈◊〉 Intelligitur D. 22. 5. 10. * Ocaeana p. 15. †Ibid p. 20. * Junius 〈◊〉 vind cont Tyran Intelligimus Magistratus quasi Regum Ephoros c. 〈◊〉 in Regno Israelitico denique Praefectos Centuriones Caeteros Vid. 6. 37. Quaest. 2. Rex Qui pactum perfide violat hujus faederis seu pacti Regni officicurii Vindices Custodes sunt Quaest. 4. pag. 169. ‖ Populi ordines jus sibi retinuisse fraenandorum Principum c. Quod ni secerint perfidi in Deum patriam habeantur De Jure Magistratuum Quaest. 6. pag. 73. Edit Francfurt Neque supremum Magistratum pro privatis delictis Coercere quae proprie Personalia sunt ibid. * Publisher to the Reader ‖ Harrington in his Epitome of the whole Common-wealth Oceana pag. 278. * Marchion Needham the supposed Author of Merc. Pol. †The Brutish Principles of Monarchy Merc. Pol. Numb 92. March 11. 1652. * Ibid. ‖ Plat. Red. page 39. Brutus's Vindiclae quest 4. p. 169. ut singuli Principe 〈◊〉 sunt 〈◊〉 universi superiore or Rex major singulis minor universis 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 * Postscr page 71. ‖ Page 73. ‖ Ibid pag. 73. Will. 〈◊〉 against the King's 〈◊〉 voice Tryal page 23. ‖ Ibid. p. 23. The words of a late learn'd Loyal Lawyer of our own are expresly the same Persons must not be Judg'd and 〈◊〉 Jenkins Lex 〈◊〉 Ed. 〈◊〉 48. Page 16. Vindiciae Quest. 2. Falsa est conclusio non debuisse poenas de 〈◊〉 aliquo sumi quia semel sumpte non sunt de jure Magist. Franckfort page 72. Quest. 6. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Ethic. Lib. 8. c. 12. * Treatise of Monarchy p. 28. * Vid 4. Eliz. 2. 46. Ne poet estre diseisor ne faire ascun tort also 4. Ed. 4. 25. B. ‖ Sir Walt. Raleigh History of the World So the Civilians as Baulus says the Prince does do well to observe those Laws to which he is not 〈◊〉 Decet tamen Principē servare Leges quibus ipse solutus est ut inquit Paulus d. 32.1.23 Merc. pol. Num. 65. 1. Samuel C. 8. verse 11 12 c. Verse 18. Tyrannus est qui exteros in praesidiis collo cat Vindiciae quest 3. Page 139 140. Raleigh Hist. Chap. 16. §. 1. Postscript pag. 68 69. Merc. Pol. 〈◊〉 92. Pedes elevabuntur supra Caput part of the Oxford Oracle Vid. Baker ‖ And even Homer a Heathen was of that Opinion 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Hom. Il. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Hos. Theog v. 96. Gen. 1. verse 16. * Imperator solus Conditor interpres Legis Zouch Element part 4. §. 4. p. 103. and c. 1. 14. 12. ‖ Quod princi placuit Legis vigorem habet D. 1. 4. 1. * Sacrilegii instar est principis rescripto obviare C. 1. 23. 5. †In 〈◊〉 Imperatoris excipitur fortuna cui ipsas Leges Deus Subjecit Nov. 105. 2. †Si summo dare urgetur ad Regem provocato Lambert in his Laws Edgar 1. 23. 5. * Quod principi 〈◊〉 Dig. 1. 4. 1. The words of Bracton Chief Justice in Henry the 3d's time Rex non alius debet Judicare and in another place Illius est Interpretari cujus est Condere ‖ Britton that Bishop of Hereford by order of Ed. 1. pen'd a Book of Laws tells us 't is the Kings will that his jurisdiction and Judgment be above all in the Realm * Hen. 8. Britton Bract. Vid. Sucron In. vitas Decet tamen Principem inquit Paulus Leges servare quibus ipse solutus D. 32. 1. 23. * Fiat Justitia ruat Coelum ‖ Vid. Paper of the Proceedings upon Armstrong his Outlawry * 'T is a receiv'd rule among civil Lawyers and may be well among our own That a King can't in Law alienate his Crown and that if it were Actually done it were de Facto void besides if the Subject was freed in that Case it would be the result of the Soveraigns Act. ‖ That alienation of King John was suppos'dto have been an Act of State and it has been adjudg'd particularly by particular Parliaments That even a Statute for that purpose made would be of no 〈◊〉 It was resolv'd 〈◊〉 Scotland too * Posts C. p. 113. ‖ Princeps Pater
debet in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 non atrocitate consistere D. 〈◊〉 9. 〈◊〉 Decet princi pem leges servare quibus ipse solutus D. 32. 1. 24. ‖ 〈…〉 est civilum Romanorum nulli 〈◊〉 homines talem potestatem habent Inst. 1. 9. Inst. lib. 21.9 Vid. Pacii Anaiibid Appellatione Familiae etiam princeps familiae Continetur Zouch pars 3. §. 4. Dig. 50. 19. 196. Neque naturale liberi neque adoptivae ullo modo possunt 〈◊〉 parentes de potestate suā eos dimittere Iust. 1. 12. 12. Vid. Jul. Pac. ibid. ‖ D. 22. 3. 8. * Ridley's part 4. C. 2. ‖ Yet Servants were heretofore with us formally Emancipated Qui servum Liberat inmercato vel hil lumdredo Lanceam gladium quae liberorum sunt arma in manibus ponat Lex H. 1. 78. Lamb. p. 206. Vid. Bract. l. 1. c. 10. Flet. l. 1. c. 7. Lex AEthelst 70. Lamb. p. 54. Post. p. 98. Si aliquis filiolum occideret ergalum parentes mortui conjunctī re us est Lex Hen. 1. 79. Lamb. p. 207. And with this agrees the reviv'd practise among our moderns to bring Appeals 25. Ed. 〈◊〉 Ed. 1. Coke 3. Ins. p. 20. * Chap. Treas p. 20. Et pur ceo plus semblable Treason c. 25. E. 3. c. 2. 〈◊〉 p 1. Mar. Cap. 1. 〈…〉 ‖ Paper at his Exec. †3. Inst. p. 20. 22. Ed. 1. Matt. Paris 874. ‖ Si quis falsaverit sigillum domini sui de cujus familia fuit Flet. l. 1. c. 22. Britton fol. 16. * Coke 3. Ins. fol. 20. ‖ 〈…〉 * Dig. ad leg Jul. maj l. ult Vid. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 l. 6. ff d. pub Vid. Lex Pompeia de Parricidiis Inst. Lib. 4. Tit. 18. Par. 6. Lex Cornelia de sicar made by Cornelius Sylla the 〈◊〉 ibid §. 510. 〈◊〉 Vld. Rom. c. 13. Paper at Execut. Posts p. 959. ‖ Dig. 22. 4. 2. D. 48. 2. 7. †37. Ed. 3. 18. 38. Ed. 3. 9. ‖ Nemo Dominum suum judicet vel judicium proseret super eum cujus ligius sit Lex Hen. 1. Lamb. 187. Patriarch p. 6 ibid. p. 93. Gen. 14. ‖ Plato Redivivus page 23. Numb 16. Hunt post Paper at Exec. Berosus the Priest of Belus talks of ten Kings of Caldea before the Flood Tryal page 26. * De Jure Magistratuum sic Dani Christiernum c. sic Sueci Sigismundum But this Author extends it too to absolute Hereditary Kingdoms as well as Mr. Sidney Sic Scoti 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 perpetuo carcere damnarunt rectius audeo dicere 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 fuisse si meritas paenas 〈◊〉 eam exercuissent D. Jure Mag. p. 47. By me Kings Rule * Merc. polit ‖ History of the World cap. 9. §. 2. Sigon de Jud. l. 2. c. 4. de Jure Rom. lib. 2. c. 18. Vid. Baker pag. 146. Rich. 11. * Qui aliquod munus gerere debent virtutis habita ratione eliguntur 〈◊〉 Orat. pro Monarch * Vid. Tacit l. 1. p. 1. Lucius Florus p. 1. †Lact. de fals rel l. 1. c. 22. Vid. Orat. Maecenat pro Monarch ‖ Dictator quoniam dictis ejus totus parebat populus Rom. Antiq. p. 170. Otho Vitellius Heliogab they set up Alexand Aurelianus Probus they murder d. * Sacrilegii instar est c. C. 1. 23. 5. ‖ Quisque vel cogitavit C. 9. 8. 5. †Ibid. Dig. 48. 19 38. * 33. Ed. 3 10. H. 7. 16. †Coke Litt. Sect. 1. fol. 1. B. The Possessions of the King are call'd Sacra Par trimonia 1 Inst. * Justin. l. 16. 36. Praestat regem Tyrannum habere quam nullum p. 182. Tacit. Lib. 1. Praestat sub malo principe esse quam nullo Page 23. * Gasper de Collign Mr. D' Andelot †Alias Godfry de la. Bar. * To renew another about the end of this unhappy War were publisht those Treasonable Tracts De jure Magist. Brutus his Vindiciae With another as pernicious a piece a Dialogue composed as pretended by one Eusebius Philadelphus Libels that expos'd Majesty to the Publick like a piece of Pageantry only to be look'd upon and shouted at Vid. Heylin's Hist. 〈◊〉 pag. 68. * Ursinus Pareus * Si bene prome si male con tra me stringito †Sleid. Com. fol. 57. An. 1575. †Tryal p. 25. * His Book burnt even by the Sorbonist at Paris A. D. 1610. * Vid. Troubles at Frankfort Edit Ann. Dom. 1642. ‖ Sanderson's History of King James p. 15. * St. Andrew's Scone Sterling Edeuburg c. 〈◊〉 pag. 123 124. * 〈◊〉 p. 31. * Isle of Lochlevin * Sanders History of K. James pag. 52. †Vid. Spotwoods Hist. p. 323 324. * An. 1503. †Que regio in terris c. Virg. AEneid †In a Speech to her Parliament dissolv'd An. 1585 and of her Reign 27 She declared them dangerous to Kingly Rule vid. Holingshed Stow. * 1 Jacob 1. †Fowlis Hist. pag. 65. * Vid. Printed Votes H. Com. That the giving the King Money c. †Vid. even Rustworth C 〈◊〉 p. 40. c. 16. E. * Aude aliquid brevibus 〈◊〉 carcere dignum si vis esse aliquid Juvenal Satyr * Vid. Com. Lit. 1 Jnst. p. 26. B. For adherencv to the Kings Enemy without the Realm the Delinquent to be attained of High Treason * Vid. Tryal p. 26. †Plato Redivivus p. 167. * Ibid. * Ibid. * Ibid. 168. * Vid. Baker p. 435. A. D. 1625. * So Plat. Red. p. 117. †Vid. The Royal and the Royalist's Plea printed A. D. 1647. * Vid. Lord Keeper's Speech to the Parliament A. D. 1625. 25. Ed. 3d. * 1. Mar. †Lex Julia Inst. 4. 18. 3d. * Merc. Polit. a 4 Institutes c. 5. b Reg. Hen. 7. c The 9th of June 1641. d 1 El. c. 1. e The ninth of June 1641. f 4 Inst. p. 192. g 32. H. 8. c. 46. h 4 Inst. c. 61 i Ed. 1. Hen. 8. R. 2. H. 5. k Chart. Forest. l 27. H. 8. c. 24. m Magn. char c 29. and their Petiton of Right n Dug view p. 68. 19. April o 10. Jan. 1644. p May. 20. Exact Coll. p. 259. q 12. H. 7. c. 1. r 17. May. Ex. 〈◊〉 p. 〈◊〉 s Coke Lit. p. 164. t 20. May. u Ed. 2. x 7. Ed. 1. y 5. H. 4. z 25. E. 3. a 5 July 42. Exact Coll. b 1. Ed. 2. de mi. litibus 7. Ed. 1. * Sidney's Tryal p. 26. Plato Redivivus p. 167. * Histor. Independ p. 27. †Ibid. * Ibid. †Ibid. p. 40. * Ibid. †Ibid. p. 44 45 46 47 48. * Sidney's Tryal p 23. * Oliver's first Parliament made the silly Acts about Marriages * Protector †The other House * Hist. Indep Pt. 4. p. 66 67. Ann. Dom. 1653. †An. Dom. 1659. Oct. 26. Hist. Indep Pt. 4. p 68. * Baker's Chron. p. 694. 1660. 1662. 〈◊〉 Wil. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 prefixt to their Tryal * Vid. The whole in an 〈◊〉 Account 〈◊〉 the Proceedings in the Parliament at London 1679. March 1681. * Vid. Coll. Tryal p 1. 9. †〈◊〉 Proceedings at the Old-Baily 24. Novem 1681. Vid. Lord 〈◊〉 Tryal Sidneys c. Feb. 7. 1683. Decemb. 1684. * Decemb. 24 1684. 〈◊〉 Discoveries in Scotland Printed by 〈◊〉 late Majesties Command as also the Account come out in this King's Reign by Order of the late Printed by Authority Vid. His Tryal for High Misdemcanor at Guild-Hall London Feb. 14. 1683 4. April 14 1684. a Jun. 29. b Jun. 30. * June 29. 1685. †June 25. 1685. a July 6. b July 7. a July 13. b July 15. a Postcript to the History of the Association Printed for Janeway London b Post. p. 94 69 70 83 93. a Considerations Consider'd p. 1 5 14. Merc. Politicus Num. 62. Num. 64. Num. 67. Num. 79. Num. 115. a Post. p. 89. a Plato Redivivus p. 209. b Vid. History of the Succession writ by Merc. Politicus Number 64 65. a Merc. Politicus Num. 59. July 24. 1651. a Sermon Preach'd to the Parliament November 5. 1651. a Merc. Politicus Num. 63. August 21. 1651. b Merc. Politicus Num 59. a Case's Sermon before the Court-Martial London 1644. †Statuimus quod omnes 〈◊〉 Regni nostri sint Fratres conjurati ad Monarchiam nostram pro viribus suis pefendendam Lex Gal. Conq. 59. Lamb p. 171. a Mere. Politicus Number 62 79.
to such a Protestant is the making her much worse than the Wildest Paganism Had he consider'd how unreasonable it was only from the selected Instances of some Turbulent Spirits how Irreligious and Vncharitable it is from a few furious provok'd Persons to have cast such an industrious blemish and blot upon the Practices of all the Primitive Christians of those Times certainly he would have found it much unbecoming his Profession more his Religion Why does he not conclude from thence too that in those days we never had any Martyrs or that all Fox's mighty Martyrology is nothing but a mere Romance for he 'll find Her Majesty the persecuting Mary in many places as severely handled Why does he not tell us in her time Wyat Crofts and Rudston REBELL'D And then conclude we had no Cranmer Latimer and Ridly that suffer'd Why does he not tell us of the Protestant Tumults of her time that there were those then could throw Stones and Daggers at a Bonner or a Bourn and not a word of the more Meeker men a Bradford or a Rogers that bid them be Patient and appeased them for his Maiden Virgin that Reviled Julian he could tell us too that of one Crofts a Maid that Mutter'd out as much Sedition against Queen Mary from the Wall and let him but deal as disingenuously in Conclusions here too the Reform'd Protestant will be as little Obliged to him as the Primitive Christian. In short if Julian abounded with such a Spirit of Meekness as he in many places makes him to demonstrate where then was this Terrible Persecution with which he makes such a dismal din If they were really Persecuted and Opprest how came they to be so powerful as to make such a signal resistance If his Old man in Berea was only rebuk'd by him for raging so hotly against his King and his Religion and only bid by his Prince in so much mildness as Friend forbear railing if at the Reproaches of the Antiochians he only declared against seeing them any more if as in his ridiculous Instance of old Father Gregory's kicking of his King he was so terfify'd and awd what is become of the Tyrant and all the Bloody Persecution that attended him to the Throne And if as in another place he has prov'd there was much the greater part that remain'd Christian where was this General Apostacy to the Pagan In my poor Apprehension the several Examples he has cited did in some sense tho beyond his design as much oblige his Adversaries cause and the late Case of Succession as some of the Loyal hearts that labour'd so much in its defence for they most of them prove that notwithstanding the perswasion of their Pagan Prince the Christian Religion flourisht as much as ever and he never Punisht any Person but for reviling him for his Apostacy to his Face and that they might have enjoy'd their own opinions quietly had they not so much molested and opposed his And must the Christian Religion then be made so Rebellious only because there were those that could revile their Prince and his perswasion that could call their Julian Goats beard Bull-burner Impious Apostate and Atheist Why then this Gentleman himself may infer that the Protestant we 〈◊〉 is as Rebelliously inclin'd and that because some Seduced Souls were not long since so much possest with Sedition as to Rebel against the Succession because a poor Perjur'd wretch could call his Soveraign Dog Devil and Traytor because M. 〈◊〉 himself suffers now a deserv'd Imprisonment for representing now his own most Christian King for ten times as great a Persecutor as the worst of the Pagan Emperors or because Protestant Subjects actual Rebels and in Arms against their Soveraign with an Arch-Traytor Attainted long since legally have publisht in his 〈◊〉 of a Declar'd Rebellion that their Liege Lord by the Laws of God and Man that is Seated in the Throne of his Ancestors by the Protection and Providence of God tho so much endeavour'd to be Destroy'd and Excluded by the Plots and Practices of these Devils and that because such Rebel Subjects have declared this their undoubted and Merciful Soveraign an Vsurper and a Tyrant Our Protestant Religion I say by the same reason may suffer for the sake of those Seditious Souls themselves from several of their own examples of a Rebellious resistance as well as in their Arguments that traduce the Principles and Practices of the Primitive Christian. The very Rebel Books that are so much Consulted by our Asserters of a Common-wealth and the Favourers of a Republick because they make a Monarch so Mean and Contemptible even those have largely treated of the same Subject that Mr. Johnson thinks he himself has only so 〈◊〉 handl'd The Author of the Rights of Magistrates makes it most of the matter of his pernicious piece in the last Question which he proposes which is in these words Whether those that are to suffer for their Religion can resist that Prince that opposes the true Religion I confess he with abundance of Foreign Impertinence tells us of Princes being bound to maintain the true Religion a thing that no one ever doubted but then I doubt whether every Prince would not believe his Religion to be most true but when he comes to the Question whether the 〈◊〉 can resist if the Soveraign design for them a false then he comes to our Mr. Johns Resolution of the Case of a Religion Establisht by Law the point in which he deluded unhappily his Patron the late Lord Russel then he tells us the same Triumphant notion and discovery in which this Divine was so much exalted that the Roman Emperors had never allow'd the Christian Religion any publick exercise But yet this very work which some would have a Catholiques but which I can hardly believe from his Brutish rage that he shows in his railing against that Church whom in several places he is pleas'd to call beast whore and Bloody Harlot that it sounds too much like the Language of the Disciplinarians of those times which were nothing else but what we now call the Fanaticks of our own yet this very piece sufficiently pernitious by both parties disown'd and discommended wont allow them to resist the Soveraign when he alters the Religion only by the same Authority by which it was Establisht but then alone calls him a Tyrant when he would abrogate it by his own Arbitrary Power whereas our Julian is a Bar beyond the best of their Advocates and would have had us resisted before we had known whe ther our Religion was to be alter'd by Law or without it whether it was to receive any Alteration at all or whether the Prince they so much Libel'd would have come to be capable as a King to Subvert or defend it for the Bill which this Libeller whom the very Law has made since so and a Court of Justice would have
so necessary to be past by the same Reason that we use Remedies against the Plague that was only a Resistance of the present Authority in an Altering the Discent of the Crown which their own Laws Declare unalterable and that only by providing against Contingencies that might never have happen'd which is a sign that they aim'd only at the Succession it self more than any danger that they fear'd from it because the Successor might be supposed at the worst possible and perhaps willing to preserve to them their Religion which they so vainly fear to lose as well as he has since ratified it with his Royal word and at the present is the Defender of our Faith too as a King as well as he had often promis'd before he was so and Mr. Julian might have spared his Plaguy Metaphor of his Pitch and Tarbox till he felt more fumes of an infected Air and some better symptons of the Plague for while their is nothing but Cypher to that Disease in the Weekly-Bill the people would take this Doctor for a Mad-man should he run about the Streets with his Antipestilentials his Fires and his Fumes But yet in this his own Case had our Author oblig'd himself but upon a great penalty not to use his preparation of Pitch and Tar to prevent the distemper I fancy he would run the risk of an Infection rather then have than forfeited the Condition And I should think an Oath taken to be true to the Crowns Heir should oblige as much prevail upon his Soul as well not to use such means and methods as would make him forsworn tho it were for the prevention of an ascertain'd danger And I cannot see how such a Bill that dissolv'd the very band of our Allegiance could be call'd any thing less then an Act of Parliament for a Statutable Perjury for none but a Johnson or a Jesuit will allow that the same Lawful Authority that impos'd an Oath to be taken can command its violation after it is took and that sticks so much at present with some of our moderate Covenanters that they cannot think themselves by special Act of their Lawful King absolved from an Oath of Rebellion administer'd by none but Rebels and Usurpers And tho this Gentlemans Oracle of the Law was pleas'd to call them but Protestant Oaths I might as well tell them they are Christian ones too if they believe the Testament to which they swear And as this Gentleman agrees with and perhaps has borrow'd from this old Disciplinarian several of his Doctrines so has also Brutus's Vindiciae handled the same Question which he has propos'd in this form whether it be Lawful to resist a Prince that Violates the Laws of God and lays waste his Holy Church But from that Excellent Author our Julian might not only have prov'd the Doctrine of Resistance to be the practice of the Primitive Christians but that it was much Older and Commanded by God himself to the Jews and as the former Author his Predecessor can only from the Text tell us of the Kings of Israel being oblig'd to propagate the true Religion such as David Solomon Asa Johosaph Hezekiah Josiah c. All Foreign to the Question so does this Brutus tell us an idle tale and the Fancy of his own Brain that therefore the People of Israel fell with Saul because they would not oppose him when he violated the Laws of God that the People suffer'd Famine for their not opposing his persidiousness to the Gibeonites that they were punish'd with the Plague because they did not resist David's numbring of the People and that the People suffer'd for Manasses poluting of the Temple because they did not oppose it But where stilldo any of these prove that the People did resist their Kings or were commanded so to do 't is but an Irreligious Presumption to think the Almighty should punish his chosen only because they did not Rebel against his Anointed when that Rebellion even by the same sacred Text is declared worse than Witchcraft and that primitive one of Corah and his Accomplices was so remarkably punish'd But I know these Authors will tell us That Eliah destroyed the Priests of Baal notwithstanding that Ahab their King countenanced their Idolatry That Jehoida the Priest set Joas on the Throne and not only rebelled against his Mother Athalia but destroyed her to restore the Worship she had abolish'd But in both these Instances they may do well to consider 1. That what was done here was by the express Direction of the true Spirit of God in his Prophets to which when our inspired Enthusiasts our Oracles only of Rebellion can prove their right as well as they but pretend it they shall be better qualified to Judge their King when he offends against the Laws of his God And does not the Text tell us upon these very Occasions always That the Word of God came to his Servants 2. Athalia here whom the People resisted deposed and slew had no Title to the Crown but what she waded through in the Blood of all the seed Royal Religion was not there the rise of the Rebellion but the right of the Crown 's Heir which was in the young King Joas whom they set on the Throne of his Father Ahaziah and for which Heavens had preserved him notwithstanding the 〈◊〉 and Design there was to destroy him 3. If Religion were the Occasion of such Insurrection as it really was not yet the Worship then introduced was altogether Pagan which by the express Command of God they were bound to extirpate And whatever our Apostate fansies in his Comparison of Paganism and Popery my Charity will oblige me as a Christian not to look upon the Professors of the same God and Saviour like to so many Turks and Mahometans unless they can prove to me from the Text that by the Worshipping of Baal is only meant the Catholick Faith and to believe in Christ is to be an Infidel In the fourth place they do not consider that even their own Arguments make all such Applications to all ourpresent Kings altogether impertinent For these Republicans that maintain these Doctrins tell us too that the Kings of Israel were always to be regulated by the seventy Elders as those of Lacedaemon by their Ephori that to these seventy the high Priest did always preside as Judg of the most difficult Affairs so that Arguments and Presidents brought from such Topicks where they make the Kings to be govern'd by their Subjects can't be applyed to Monarchs that are Modern and more absolute tho this their very Assertion that makes against their own Application is no less than a great Lye For we find both the Kings of Israel and Judah from the Chronicles the very Records of those times to be Princes altogether absolute and to have executed too that unlimited Jurisdiction I have related these few passages out of the fore mentioned Authors to let this