Dissolution of that Parliament in the House of Peers upon the reason of an unnatural Prorogation was not long before censured and some great Lords imprisoned therefore proceedings so unwarrantable that it was after thought fit by that House to obliterate the Memory of them so necessary was that Parliament then thought to the service of the Crown The Dissolution of that Parliament gave us reason to fear that the King had no more business for Parliaments By these Dissolutions no publick ends that are intelligible are served no Interest but that of the Plot is gratified no persons of any sort receive their satisfaction but the Plotters who are respited thereby from publick Justice and gain time to bring their Plot to effect This is the end the Papists have served but the King our great Physician of State had another reason that hath gâ—…ned him for he knew the strength of the Plâ—… our Disease and that a Disease that is dangerous is sometimes to be palliated until the season comes to make a thorow Cure for it many times kills the Patient to precipitate the Crisis All these Demonstrations of the Plot are past under every mans observation But that we know so little of it after all this time It is now above three years since the first discovery That the Plotters now ordinarily escape Justice That a great Judge did abate his first Zeal in punishing the Plot lest he should exasperate it and Reason of State might thus require it These things prove the greatness and strength of the Plot as well as the reality of it these declare the Plotters interest is great that the Plot is yet unbroken stanch and hopeful Therefore we are not to believe our selves well and live fine Regimine as the Physicians say but to expect address to and desire our Cure That the Papists think it yet hopeful is evident from the Priests and the Lawyer abjuring their guilt with their last breath We had the honest Confessions of the Convicted Priests and other Traitors of the Popish Treasons of which they stood Convicted in the time of Queen Elizabeth and in the time of King James of the Gun-powder Treason What then could induce our Plotters Convict to utter most solemn Perjuries the next minute before they were to appear to God nothing sure but that they then hoped that the Plot might be executed they did it for the interest and service of their Church and for the better bringing that Plot to effect for which they dyed and for which at their deaths to conceal they adventured Heroically upon lyes and perjuries which if confessed would have been frustrated and become Abortive For it must not be believed that even that Church is so degenerate as to permit and allow men to such impieties for the punctilio's of honor though of the Church it self But while they are not done for the sake of him that commits them but for an important interest of their Church such as the carrying on of this Plot they say they loose their nature by the direction of the intention they become a pure piece of mortification and self-denyal an adventure to trust God in what they do for his sake and for his service and their Casuists will no more call them in this Case lyes or perjuries than Abraham's offering up his Son Isaac though that was at Gods express command was murder But the God of Truth that God who hath declared that when he himself in any entercourse with Mankind interposeth an Oath that the matter under that Oath is irrevocable peremptory and absolute cannot license or dispense with perjurious falshoods for any end whatsoever But I must remark one thing more and that is touching the credit of Dr. Titus Oats and Capt. William Bedloe viz. That they have been incurious in their conversation have followed their own natural course allowed themselves in their passions have been apert and unreserved have not cared who they offended have sought no mans favour seem to care for no mans opinion have valued and supported themselves only by their veracity and have seemed to set all the world at defiance to find a flaw in their evidence and have had little of friendship or esteem but for the sake of their discovery Besides that so long a time hath not afforded a possibility by all the Artifice Interest and unhallowed frauds of Rome to falsify any one part of that evidence But numberless events have given credit and authentickness to their Testimony Did ever any feigned Testimony bear it self up with so much Confidence Bravery and Assurance was there ever any false witness that did not endeavour to render himself acceptable to bespeak favour which draws after it credit and to appear of the most unexceptionable behaviour Their faults and imprudences such as they have been we would not have wanted to make their evidence beyond all exception The undoubted truth of their evidence alone hath given them the civil respect of all honest men and will give the Doctor the publick honours of the Nation in due time I will not recite the innumerable Sham-plots contrived against the Protestants every one of them a Demonstration by it self of the truth of the Popish Plot because I have no design to exasperate but awaken these men that are asleep and secure in this storm This trouble of demonstrating of the Plot may seem unnecessary to the judicious nay to the plain sort of honest upright and well-meaning men and so it would certainly have been had not some young Gentlemen by this paltry thing called Wit been corrupted in their judgments and brought into a Scepticism and wild undetermination in a matter of so great concernment This despicable faculty hath made a famous Gentleman who hath a liberal Dose of it a Writer of Books caused him to waste so much Paper and abuse so many Readers but in all that I have read of him there is nothing true and sincere or truly and sincerely said his Judgment is made false by his Phantasie or he hath serv'd a turn by his Versatile windings and Wily conceits That dangerous faculty that he indulgeth hath imposed upon him which the severe and honest enquirers after truth are concerned to mortify and suppress And I do earnestly recommend to all ingenious Gentlemen that would be rightly instructed and informed neither deceive others nor would be deceived themselves as they love truth and virtue wisdom and sober thoughts to despise this sort of wit in others and repress it in themselves And never allow it to be used but in the hours of mirth in the Relaxations of their minds from serious Contemplations and matters grave and weighty where this prophane thing Wit ought always to be shut out with care Enough hath been said for rectifying the mistakes of any true Protestant especially any Clergy-man of the Church of England which you have objected against them about our Government or Parliament Dissenters from the Church of England and Popery Especially
Mr. Hunt's POSTSCRIPT FOR Rectifying some MISTAKES in some of the Inferiour CLERGY Mischievous to our GOVERNMENT and RELIGION With Two Discourses about the SUCCESSION And Bill of EXCLUSION In Answer to Two Books Affirming the Unalterable Right of SUCCESSION and the Unlawfulness of the Bill of EXCLUSION In turbas discordias pessimo cuique plurima vis pax quies bonis artibus indigent Tacit. Hist l. 4. LONDON Printed for the Author and are to be sold by the Booksellers of London and Westminster 1682. To the Right Honourable JOHN EARL OF RADNOR Viscount Bodmin Lord Roberts Baron of Truro And Lord President of His Majesties most Honorable Privy-Council My Lord THE Reason that moved me to inscribe these following Discourses to your Name is to create a prejudice and bespeak a good esteem with all Mankind to whom your Lordships Character is arrived of my Integrity and Snicerity therein Your Lordships free and open Acknowledgment of your self to the World That you have liv'd your inward Nature That you never dissembled or disguised your self avowed plainness and despised all Arts Intrigues and Applications hath made your Lordship Universally Honoured every where and by all sorts and parties of men entirely trusted and you are become an Illustrious instance That nothing is so popular in a Noble Person as Simplicity and open Sincerity no not Bounty and Beneficence it self to which Office likewise your Lordship is not indebted or in any arrear A great Moralist prescribes and commends to all Men that would hold on an uninterrupted Course of Virtue and preserve their Innocence to put on 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as a Defensative and Out-guard to Virtue That is to say a stiffness and inflexibleness of Mind something that can resist those soft and gentle prejudices that perswade undue compliances and abuse the facile weak and tender Minds to accommodate themselves in little Matters to the present occasions until by little and little sincerity is almost quite perished from the World and mischiefs apt to destroy it ready to follow in consequence of such unmanly compliance Men to relieve themselves from inward reproach whilst they contradict their inward sense have found out the specious names of Civility Submission to our Superiours Nay have usurpt the glorious name of the Virtue of Modesty which is the Noblest and most ample Virtue which gives Rules that are almost comprehensive of our whole Duty for to this Virtue we owe a greatness of Mind and a reverence of our selves as well as equability and Justice to others to varnish over Dissimulation Craft Hypocrisie Flattery Treachery Falshood and a deceitful Conversation And are bold to reproach the severe Honest with the Names of Morose Disloyal and Disobedient to turn off from themselves the shame of their own prevarications and utter defections from publick Interest which God knows men easily slide into insensibly if they once suffer themselves for any regard whatsoever to be carried off from the Rule of Right for they bring themselves under some kind of Necessities of complying with the Evils their first aberrations occasioned by greater faults which increase reciprocally at every turn until they become desperate Out-laws absolve themselves from all Duty they owe to their King and Countrey abandon themselves to Chance to live and subsist by untoward shifts and arts which increase their first Guilts and turn their Errors into unpardonable Crimes having shipwreck'd their Consciences they care not if the Government be wreck'd too to which they have made themselves so very abnoxious This whilst men please others they lose themselves and from Flattery it is easily proceeded to the most mischievous Treacheries He that despiseth his own way shall dye saith King Solomon A man that accommodates himself to serve Occasions dissembles himself and appears other than he is will soon extinguish his Conscience and dye to Virtue He that doth not honour himself will not regard men and they that do not Reverence Men will not fear God Qui non verentur homines fallent Deos. The Arts of Complaisance so much relyed upon at the Courts of Princes hath extruded the Laws of Honesty thence where they are most necessary This hath made the Condition of great Men very uncertain and fortuitous infinitely subject to Chance and Hazard the Thrones of Princes unstable and tottering and left the Peace and Security of Kingdoms scarce at any time undisturbed with Fears Jealousies evil surmises and contending Factions upon Reasons true and false real and feigned causes Every man almost is sometimes complaining of the uneasie condition that he himself concurs to make to himself but is always in some sort miserable by fearing from others whom he gives too much cause to fear from himself and to mistrust him for his double dealing But what other consequence can they expect that ever feign and uncessantly dissemble but not to be believed not to be trusted hated for their baseness and feared for that great Evil they would dissemble The greatness of the Evil designed is justly measured by the coarse and base Artifices they use to hide them they are impudent to all the discerning and wise whilst they busily set themselves by mean and base Arts to abuse the Fools and inconsiderate the vain and the credulous whom they have at the same time in the greatest scorn whilst they have nothing to value themselves upon but that such little men are deceived by them But there is another sort of men that design well for the Publick whilst they dispense with the strict Laws of Truth and Sincerity But I cannot tell upon the whole matter whether they are not more hurtful to themselves than profitable to the Common-wealth by their well-design'd and honestly-directed compliances and dissimulations I mean such men as lend themselves to the service of the Publick who are so kind as to disfigure themselves to take other shapes and appearances of what they are not Who are content to neglect their Honour and Reputation of Sincerity whilst under a feigned assentation they hinder all the evil and do all the good they can do and the present state of things will permit and suffer the rest with a great compassion for the Publick Weal But such mens Praise must come from God their Honour will never be entire amongst men and after all the difficult and hazardous Services they can perform for their King and Countrey their Honour will still remain suspected doubtful and obscure amongst men who must judge according to appearance When we have been often abused by the fairest pretenders to a regular and constant Virtue we cannot easily trust those that have sometime dissembled and represt it My Lord It is a peculiar Felicity of your Lordship that from a Generous and Honest Nature and a Noble Mind rather than from the institution of Books though your Learning is famously great to which you seem made rather than instructed your sincerity is incorruptible and stands in no need of that
been ashamed of some of their works of darkness and do not bring into present use some of their most gross Impostures and some worse than Pagan Superstitions Yet when this light is extinguish'd it will be a most dismal and eternal Night upon the Christian world If we return to her our Ears will be bored and we shall be irredeemably enslaved The spirit of Popery if it returns and possesseth us again that hath been walking in the reformed Countries as in dry places seeking rest and finding none and finds us thus swept and garnisht will bring with it seven Devils more wicked than it self and our last estate will be worse than the first The Pride Cruelty and Avarice Domination and Luxury of their Priesthood will be aggravated upon us and the minds of the Laity more lowly depressed by Superstition and Ignorance The Gospel of Cardinal Palavicini will be the Canon of the Christian Religion or it may be something worse for who can tell what will be the Religion that that Church will offer in process of time to the world under the Christian-Name When the Pope by his pretended infallibility may make the Christian Religion what he please by interpreting adding altering or detracting with an uncontroulable Authority For us therefore to become Papists to return to the Church of Rome acknowledge the Popes Infallibility there is no other way to become Papists is virtually to betray the Christian Faith to renounce our Allegiance to our Lord Christ to prefer the Bulls of a profane Pope to the holy Oracles of God and the Revelation of Jesus God blessed for ever With this Religion therefore we can never make an accommodation we may as well make a Covenant with Hell This as Dr. Jackson one of the glories of the Church of England in his Book called The Eternal Truth of Scriptures vehemently admonisheth us admits no terms of parley for any possible reconcilement whose following words to this purpose I shall here transcribe The natural separation of this Island from those Countries wherein this Doctrine is professed shall serve as an everlasting Emblem of the Inhabitants divided Hearts at least in this point of Religion And let them O Lord be cut off speedily from amongst us and their Posterity transported hence never to enjoy again the least good thing this Land affords Let no print of their Memory be extant so much as in a Tree or Stone within our Coast Or let their Names by such as remain here after them be never mentioned or always to their endless shame Who living here amongst us will not imprint these or the like wishes in their Hearts and daily mention them in their Prayers Littora Littoribus contraria fluctibus undas Imprecor arma armis pugnent ipsique Nepotes Which he thus renders Let our forein Coasts joyn Battel in the Main E're this foul Blasphemy Great Britain ever stain Where never let it come but floating in a Flood Of our our Nephews and their Childrens blood I shall only subjoyn my hearty Desires and Prayers that we may all fear God and be zealous for his true Religion Honour the King and firmly adhere to the Government and in our several places steadily oppose and resist those Villains that are given to change That by our Vnion we may defeat the crafty designs of our cruel and implacable Enemies who if they can continue those Divisions they have made amongst us by their wicked Arts will certainly at length destroy us who are bent upon our destruction though they themselves perish with us we cease to be a Nation and our Language be forgotten in a foreign Captivity Sir Now I have given you my Answer to your Reasons to disswade me from publishing the Argument for the Bishops by representing how few of the Clergy can with reason be thought guilty of Opinions so mischievous to the Church and State which you charge to have generally corrupted them and how easily and with little consideration they will be laid aside by them I will make no other Apologie for the publishing this than that I have communicated these thoughts to no Man alive either of the Church of England or any other denomination or consulted any mans advice about it That I can serve to design of no party of men herein nor any particular design of my own I wish they can be serviceable in the least degree to publick good I have had them by me a great while and have considered them under the several varieties of temper that our bodies are disposed to which induce different thoughts and various apprehensions in most things under the several passions that the fluctuation of publick affairs have occasioned under the Ebbs and Flows of Hopes and Fears in reference to the state of the Kingdom for some length of time And finding them to have the same appearance and to give me the same satisfaction in all their several postures and the views that I could take of them I assure my self I was sincere when I thought and that they result meerly from my Judgment such as it is uncorrupted That I am not perverted or biassed by any secret passion or desire of any sort which many times lurk and steal upon us deceive us unawares and undiscernedly abuse us Sir the sum of my Apologie is this that I know my self sincere of honest Intentions moved by nothing but a hearty love and affection to our King Religion and Country And for what any man shall think of me I am not Solicitous Yours T. H. The Great and Weighty CONSIDERATIONS Relating to the Duke of York OR Successor of the Crown Offered to the KING and both Houses of Parliament CONSIDERED WITH An ANSWER to a LETTER from a Gentleman of Quality in the Country to his Friend relating to the Point of Succession to the Crown Whereunto is added A short HISTORICAL COLLECTION touching the same LONDON Printed for the Author and are to be Sold by the Booksellers of London and Westminster 1682. TO THE READER I Have in the Postscript offered Reasons of the Lawfulness of an Act of Exclusion which to all true Protestants must needs be desirable if it can be lawfully obtained Yet for the farther satisfaction of unthinking people and Men of weak Minds who are never certain especially in great Matters where Men of Note are divided in their Opinions but for that very Reason where they have no direct Reason to guide them in forming their Judgment remain scrupulous if not doubtful and for that they doubt they must therefore conclude the Matter as to themselves at least unlawful I have Reprinted these Discourses that were Printed near three years since in Answer to two Books written by two Eminent Persons the first supposed to be writ by a great Secretary the other by a notable Lawyer thereto employed under promises and expectations of great Preferments This mans Book especially is highly applauded by the Ducal Party his very words made the stile of the
Act of Parliament in Scotland for the Recognition of the unalterableness of the Descent of the Crown and his Book accounted unanswerable and the whole Cause by the Asserters of this Doctrine put upon the force and consequence of his Reasonings And indeed I have seen nothing so considerable made publick and offered to the World for the defence of the unalterable Right of the Descent of the Crown as are the reasons of these two Books which we have considered in these following Discourses To the end that the reasons against the Bill of Exclusion as well as the reasons for it being duly examined together no honest man may from a doubtful Conscience be any longer under a necessity of suffering the Mischiefs of a Popish Successour which will be more intolerable when they come to be felt than any imagination can suggest or any words can express True it is the Most cannot consider duly of a Matter and determine upon it by their own proper Reasonings and Discoursings and yet they have so much reason as to think That where Doctors differ they have respectively their reasons for their different opinions though they themselves do not apprehend them and consequently at least doubt and of what they doubt they conclude unlawful Yet even the Most may judge what weight and moment the reasons and arguments upon which each party ground their Conclusions are of if they are truly clearly and nakedly propounded reflected upon and made fit for their Judgment and Capacity and they may thereby be brought to discharge their doubt and determine with clear satisfaction in any matter so discussed if they will honestly and duly consider I perswade my self I have by the reflections I have made upon the Discourses of these two renowned Authors prepared their Reasonings for the judgment of the ordinary sort of men if honest To such their Arguments must appear so frivolous as they will conclude these Authors downright Advocates for the Popish Superstition and Cruelty under the thin pretences of defending That a Successour to the Crown by an ordinary and common right cannot be Excluded by an Act of State Such a Successour who if he be not a Papist yet hath openly departed from our Church in which he was born and for which his Father suffered Martyrdome and for the preserving the Peace of Three Kingdoms disdains to tell us he is a Protestant and neglects the direful Imprecations of his Grand-Father though no Curses are so operative as those of Parents upon their Children upon weighty causes solemnly pronounced These can kill at the Root the most flourishing and prolifical Families make their Root rottenness and their Blossom to go up as dust Omnem vastant stirpemque domumque 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And therefore I have caused these reflections to be Reprinted if happily they may conduce any thing towards a full information of my doubting honest Countrymen in a matter so weighty and consequently towards the prevention of the effusions of English Blood in Wars Massacres and Martyrdomes and of the lawless violent and bloody attempts to be made for the Extirpation of the Reformed Religion Establisht amongst us by Law by the Romanists And lastly towards the re-establishment of our Government and Nation in Peace and Tranquillity again which are now most miserably distracted by the fears of a Popish Successour and by the Doubts about Excluding him If we did not doubt without reason of the lawfulness of Excluding a Popish Successour we should have no reason to fear him The Great and Weighty CONSIDERATIONS c. CONSIDERED WHatever is the subject matter upon which we exercise our thoughts or whereupon we make our Enquities doth not make the Considerations of slight and vain Men GREAT and WEIGHTY A man of slender Endowments doth not commence to be Wise as soon as matters of great Moment take up his Thoughts But if he be of such a make as renders him capable of being in any degree wise he is affected with an ingenuous Shame finding the matters too hard for his Capacity and above his reach He is displeased and dissatisfied with his own dark indistinct and confused Conceptions in which he himself can receive no satisfaction he suspends and determines nothing but that he doth not understand the matter and resorts with deference to those who are wiser than himself But there is a sort of Arrogant Fools who trouble the World make it difficult to understand plain Truth confound the Notions of things blend things of remote distances in their nature together or put one thing for another that have no affinity to each other puzzle and perplex the minds of the Weak These deserve the Indignation of the better sort of Judgments who cannot but be empassioned while they see a great part of mankind abused to their hurt By the villanous practices of some designed to the endurance of the greatest mischiefs and by a sort of silly Knaves attempted upon for deceiving them into a permission of all the pretended evils to come upon them who presumptuously use their little Wit to ensnare the Consciences to perplex the Minds of the Multitude by Objections puzzling to the weak by such Reasonings as none but fools could think of and none but bold Knaves would offer to the World Such I take to be every immodest man who will adventure not from his Understanding and therefore from his Will and consequently his Interest to speak things that have no consequence and are not induc'd by the Laws of Reasoning and Discourse that have a tendency to dispose men to scruple of Conscience and make them doubtful and unactive against the evils of the greatest size that are design'd against them and to neglect or resist the Counsels of God against themselves and fatally fall under the designed evils notwithstanding they are provided of a just and allowable Remedy against them There are and ever was and ever will be to the trouble of Mankind a sort of literate Fools who will always obtain some reputation with the stupid admiring Vulgar made by Nature to little Understanding and who have lost that little for want of using it who by Books good of bad it matters not much become greater Fools than they could have been if left to simple Nature who by imperfect remembrances and undue joyning of things more imperfectly understood make most perverse Judgments in all things they are conversant about And if it happen that by their Complexion they prove forward and are opinionated of their false Learning they obtrude upon the World their unnatural monstrous and incoherent Conceptions And if they chance to mix their Discourses with passages of Holy Scriptures and thereby entitled Religion to their Absurdities they more powerfully amuse distract and abuse the Consciences of the common People and perplex them with Scruples and Prejudices and that sometimes against the only means of their preservation And this calls upon and urgeth the Charity of such to whom God hath given a better
proceeding upon evident notoriety to exclude one that designs the subverting of it and the destruction of those that are to be governed and protected and hath incurr'd a severer Doom I well hope there are very few in this Nation so ill instructed that doth not think it in the Power of the People to depose a Prince who really undertakes to alienate his Kingdom or to give it up into the hands of another Soveraign Power Or that really acts the Destruction or the Universal Calamity of his People The Learned and Judicious Mr. Falkner than whom there is no person of this Age with the Church of England in greater esteem Who truly merits the high esteem of all men for his excellent Candour and Learning In his Book called Christian Loyalty cannot deny the right to be so upon those cases really happening but is not willing to suppose such Cases can ever happen in Fact He tells us If any such strange Case as is proposed should really happen in the World it would have its great difficulties Grotius he tells us thinks that in this utmost extremity the use of such defence as a last refuge ultimo necessitatis proesidio is not to be condemned provided the care of the common Good be preserved And if this be true saith he it must be upon this Ground that such attempts of ruining do ipso facto include a disclaiming the Governing these persons as Subjects and conseqently of being their Prince and King and then notwithstanding his Proposition saith he would remain True viz. That it is not lawful upon any pretence whatsoever to take Arms against the King All that Mr. Falkner offers in this matter out of his commendable Care and Zeal to Peace and Government is to argue the Cases in Fact impossible and that such suppositions may be the undue imputations of Factious persons against their Soveraign He thinks that Princes may have a Consideration of the Account they must give in the other World of their Government here That they have a regard to their Honour and Esteem and a Respect to their Safety To the quiet and serenity of their own minds and will avoid the Diroe Vltrices and the Tortures of mind that attend Cruelty and the Actors of great mischief and by such Considerations as these be contain'd in their Duty But do these Arguments of his that should reasonably and ordinarily do secure us against the Oppressions of Potentates give us in this juncture any Security are these Considerations Disswasives or Incitements to a Popish Prince to act our Fears and give reality to the Suppositions To any under the Principles and Counsels that guide such a Prince already entred upon the Design and his party obnoxious these Considerations would urge him to proceed and make our Calamity certain These Arguments of his applyed to such a state of things is like a Protestatio contra factum and like the Sophistical Arguments of the Stoicks who would undertake to prove a thing acknowledged and existent and present to be impossible How wild then and transported must this Patriot seem who will undertake to argue the Bill guilty of the highest Iniquity and Injustice Arraign the greatest and Best part of the Nation adjure them to answer it at his Tribunal challenge us for so his Expostulations and Enquiries of us doth import with intentions to over-reach Providence and that we despair of the justness of our Cause or the goodness of God And he tells us That God doth not want our Wickedness to fulfil his Holy Will We answer How far the Providence of God will assist us in this undertaking we know not it is not new in the world for the most Righteous Causes to be unprosperous we are only to do our Duty and leave the Issue and Event thereof to his All-Wise Providence But we know and are most assured of the Justness of the undertaking and we have a good hope in the goodness of God that he will succeed it for that herein we are doing nothing that is evil but fulfilling his Holy and Good Will I mean not that we are certain to obtain what we desire and pursue But it is the will of God concerning us who hath left us in the hands of our own Counsel and hath not told us That he will save us by a Miracle that we should be Loyal to our Soveraign zealously love that excellent Religion and that excellent Government that his Gracious Providence hath established amongst us by Law And also that we desire and endeavour by Law to disable in the understanding of the representative of the Nation a profest Enemy both to our Religion and Government from getting into the Throne that he be not by that advantage of Power enabled to effect his purpose But we are resolved we that will not call that Design Evil tho' it do not succeed nor think that we are not doing the Holy Will of God tho' we should be unprosperous therein and without success If there was an Oracle to Consult we would not know what the Success should be lest our Virtue should lose its Glory No brave man but would despise all Auguries when he is to contend for his Country and things more precious to him than his Life Sortilegis egeant dubij This false Patriot takes Sanctuary in his Revolt from publick Interest and he thinks he is swimming to Shore with his Plank before a Wreck and will fly the Danger before it approaches but we will do our Duty weather the Storm secure of the event for the goodness of the Cause makes us hopeful and we will Triumph in our Integrity tho' disappointed Of any other Will of God save what is his Will for us to do as Citizens Souldiers or Martyrs we are not so sollicitous to know The Noble Roman when advised by his Friend Labienus to Consult the Oracle of Jupiter Ammon as to the event of the War in which he was then engaged Thus answered him Quid Quaeri Labiene Jubes an liber in armis Occubuisse velim potius quam Regna videre An noceat vis ulla bono fortunaque perdat Opposita virtute minus Laudandaque velle Sit satis Et nunquam successu crescit Honestum Scimus haec nobis non altius inseret Ammon I do but right to my Country-men to bear my publick Testimony that their generous and godly Resolutions are agreeable to this Noble Roman But that done I will calmly tell him That we are in a Legal method allowed by the Government contending for its preservation by the Bill of Exclusion and that most certainly he can have no right against a Law for such it will be when that Bill hath the Royal Assent to any thing that he shall forfeit thereby And whether such a Law is not most righteous let God Angels and Men Judge And here it will not be amiss to admonish this Patriot That no man hath a Right to any thing from God and Nature to use his
by Parliament ought not to direct the Right of the Crown of England Or that our said Severaign Lady the Queens Majesty that now is with and by the Authority of the Parliament of England is not able to make Laws and Statutes of sufficient Force and Validity to limit and bind the Crown of this Realm and the Discent Limitation Inheritance and Government thereof Or that this present Statute or any part thereof or any other Statute to be made by the Authority of the Parliament of England with the Royal Assent of our said Soveraign Lady the Queen for limiting of the Crown or any Statute for Recognizing the Right of the said Crown and Realm to be Iustly and Lawfully in the most Royal Person of our said Soveraign Lady the Queen is not are not or shall not or ought not to be for ever of good and sufficient Force and Validity to Binde Limit Restrain and Govern all Persons their Rights and Titles that in any wise may or might claim any Interest or Possibility in or to the Crown of England in Possession Remainder Inheritance Succession or otherwise howsoever And all other Persons whatsoever every such person so holding affirming or maintaining during the life of the Queens â—…elly shall be adjudged a High Traitor and sufâ—…r and forfeit as in Cases of High Treason is acâ—ustomed and every Person so holding affirming or maintaining after the Decease of our said Soveraign â—ady shall forfeit all his Goods and Chattels AN ANSWER TO A BOOK Published 1679. Intituled A LETTER FROM A GENTLEMAN of Quality In the COUNTRY to his Friend c. Relating to the Point of SUCCESSION to the CROWN c. BY several accidents the former sheets have stopt in the Press from a few days afteâ— the Great and Weighty Consideration were published and being now ready to comâ— forth we have a Gentleman of Quality as hâ— calls himself undertaking from Scripture Law History and Reason to shew how improbable 〈◊〉 not impossible it is to bar the next Heir in thâ— right Line from the Succession in a Letter to his â—onoured Friend A. B. And now after so long a time of consideration one should think the many men of great Parts â—nd Learning that are dependents on the Duke â—pirited with zeal and ambition should have offered all that they have to say against the Bill â—or excluding his Royal Highness And this â—eing as may be reasonably concluded the last endeavours of the most learned and best parted men of that Interest This Letter for that reason onely but not for any thing of moment that â—t offers deserves to be considered We will not follow him from Paragraph to Paragraph since the greatest part of it is vain and empty pedantick bombast and putid affectation I shall onely draw you up short Summaries of his several Reasons and give them all the advantages they can challenge and improve them by just and natural Inferences And that I think will be enough of confutation and a sufficient countercharm against his deceiving the People He first lays down for a Ground That the Succession to the Crown of England is inseparable annexed to Proximity and nextness of Bloud by the Laws of God and Nature And all Statute-Laws contrary to the Laws of God and Nature are ipso facto null and void That it is contrary to the Laws of God he proves by the Law of God given by Moses to the Jews in the 7th of Numbers that directs how the Succession of Lands should be amongst the Jews and whatsoever Statute-Laws are contrary to those Laws are null and void he saith The consequence of this Argument is this That the Laws given by God to the Jews are Laws to all Mankind That our common-Law and Statute-Law is against the Law of God and null and void because not agreeable to the Law of Moses That the eldest Son is not to take by Descent the whole inheritance but a double portion onely and that the Crown must be disposed of in Descents accordingly That not the first Son only and one Daughter but all the Daughters of a King if never so many must succeed together to the Crown That no Father can sell his Patrimony for that was the Jewish Law and established in that Chapter he quotes He proves it to be a Law of God further for that God saith to Cain of Abel That his desires shall be subject and thou shalt rule over him The consequence of this is that because Cain could not kill Abel notwithstaning he was to have the Primacy That Abel much more could not kill Cain his Elder Brother And further he proves that to be a Law of God because God maketh choice of the first-born to be Sanctified and Consecrated to himself And therefore it most certainly follows with this Gentlemen that he which is not the first-born must be so too I wish his Royal Highness the second born the Consecration of a Priest which the Text means notwithstanding the Text doth not allow it him so that he will not pretend to the Consecration of a King which is clearly out of the meaning of the Text. He says Consonant hereunto are the Suffrages of the Doctors of the Civil and Imperial Law The Consequence of this is first That he is not bound to be coherent to himself for he was before proving the Law of God to be That the Succession of the Crown is inseparably annxed to proximity of bloud and now he tells us of some Opinions of Fathers and Doctors that are consonant thereunto when they do not at all relate in their Opinions to what he had produced out of Moses his Law Secondly it follows that he is impertinently troublesome to his Reader by telling him of the Opinions of great names in this matter that the Eldest Son by ordinary right is to have his Fathers Estate in some Countries or that the Crown doth so ordinarily descend where the Succession is hereditary he should have spared them for another time when he shall say something that all mankind doth not agree in Thirdly That he is a man of little reading otherwise he would have been insufferably impertinent by 10000 quotations in this matter Fourthly That he is no Civilian for that in this place he calls the Soveraignity a Fee when all men agree that a Crown is of that fort of Inheritancs which they call Allodiums that are held 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 This would have made a swinging Argument for his Jure Divino if he had thought of it but we will give it them gratis He tells us the Duke of York is in the same condition as the Eldest Son of the King Reigining though his Brother be King That the second Son of a King Regent when the first is dead living his Father is within the 25. of E. 3. that makes it Treason to compass the death of the King 's Eldest Son and that such Second Son is Prince of Wales and Duke of Cornwal The