it seems by the Prophet Jeremy's sad bewailing of it in his Book of Lamentations And as the Prophet Jeremy declares the Effects so the Prophet Ezekiel declares the Causes of this their miserable condition namely their Perjury breaking the Oath of Allegeance they had taken and their revolting from their obedience they had sworn to the King of Babylon who had conquered them and forced them to submit to his unlimited power in Government of them which if it had been unlawfull for them to obey God would not have suffered them to be punished as they were for endeavouring as they did to free themselves from it at least he would not have called that endeavour of theirs a Rebellion and specified it as the main cause for which they were so punished And it is very observable that though God had promised to free them from that yoke which first the Assyrians had laid upon them and afterwards the Persian Monarchs did keep them under yet when after their seventy years Captivity was accomplished and the prefixed time of their deliverance was come as the Text tells us Daniel knew by Books namely by what he had read in the former Prophets it was God would not suffer them so much as to endeavour to deliver themselves by strong hand or by rising up in Arms against their unlimited Sovereign as no doubt he could have done if he would but he put into the heart first of Cyrus and afterwards of Artaxerxes Kings of Persia then their Masters and unlimited Sovereigns not onely to give them leave to return into their own Countrey but abundantly to furnish them with Money and Materials of all sorts for the rebuilding of the Temple and City of Jerusalem as is recorded at large in the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah And like unto this was their former Deliverance out of the land of Egypt out of the house of bondage from whence after a long and grievous slavery they were brought out by a strong hand indeed but not by a strong hand of their own for as they never attempted any thing against the arbitrary unlimited Government they lived under during their very long and very cruel slavery in Egypt so when at last they went out of it they went not out without Pharaoh's leave to doe so though there were above Six hundred thousand fighting Men amongst them a number sufficient to have made their way by force against all the Power Pharaoh could have raised to hinder it but God would not give them courage or suffer them to doe so to the end that there might be no countenance or colour for Rebellion against even the most unjust and injurious and tyrannical Sovereign Powers to be found upon record in his Word as allowed by him in his own People to justifie or encourage any other people or persons upon any pretence to rebell against their Sovereigns whether limited or unlimited nay whether they were no Tyrants or Tyrants so they were not Vsurpers and consequently Rebels themselves against their rightfull Sovereign For as I have already proved that all unlimited Governours are not Tyrants because they are unlimited so I am now to prove that all Tyrants do not lose their right to their Government because they are Tyrants or because they govern tyrannically still supposing them to be no Usurpers CHAP. V. That lawfull Governours by being Tyrants do not forfeit their Right to their Government proved from Scripture both Negatively and Affirmatively NOw what or whom Mr. Baxter himself doth mean by Tyrants here in this place it is plain and evident from what he saith Page 86. of his Political Aphorisms where distinguishing betwixt an Vsurper and a Tyrant he tells us that An Vsurper is he that wants a Title and A Tyrant is one that doth abuse it or useth it not as he ought to use it that is saith he for the common good So that in his Notion of a Tyrant he that hath never so just a Title to the Government if he govern not as he ought to govern is a Tyrant and if he be a Tyrant he hath no Right saith he unto his Government whether it be limited or unlimited No saith Mr. Baxter I do not say he hath no right to his Government but that he hath no right to his unlimited Government whereby I confess I know not what he means unless it be this that an unlimited Governour is not a Governour but a Tyrant and that he hath no right to his unlimited Government because there ought to be no such Government But then again what will become of his division of Governours and consequently of Governments also into some that are limited and some that are unlimited If he reply that though de facto As to matter of fact there be some Governours and Governments that are unlimited yet de jure As to matter of right they ought all of them to be limited and consequently no man can have a right to an unlimited Government because a Government that is unlimited is no rightfull Government If this be his meaning it is but petitio Principii A begging of that which is in question nay of that which I think I have put out of question already by the Instances I have given 1 of Paternal Government in the Old World before the Floud 2. Of the first Monarchs in the New World after the Floud 3. Of all Conquerours over those whom they have conquered in a just War who were all of them unlimited Governours by any humane Constitution and that not de facto As in fact onely but de jure In right also there being no positive law of God nor no humane antecedent Pact or Constitution to the contrary Such likewise were the Roman Emperours and yet their Right and Title to their unlimited Government was never question'd either by Christ himself or by any of the Primitive Christians who were his first and best disciples So that there is no more to be said to prove that it is not the Governour 's I mean the Sovereign or Supreme Governour 's being unlimited that can make him to have no right to his unlimited Government Neither need there to be much said to prove that it is not the lawfull Governour 's being a Tyrant whether he be limited or unlimited that can make him lose or forfeit the right he had or hath unto his Government so as to free his Subjects from their obligation of obedience to him or warrant their taking up of Arms or rebelling against him and consequently to depose him and put him to death for upon the same ground and by the same reason the former may be done the latter may be done also So that the Presbyterians are no more excusable from being our late blessed King's murtherers than the Independents the latter inferring the Conclusion from the Premisses of the former But this by the way onely I proceed to the proof of what I have in hand namely
therefore I am sure he cannot forget it or at least will remember it assoon as he is put in mind of it And to him I appeal for the verifying of what I have said as to this particular But if any man shall notwithstanding Sir Philip Warwick's attestation think it to be incredible that the two Houses of Parliament being then in their Zenith should indure any such thing to be said so much to their reproach and condemnation of their cause and of all their proceedings without any animadversion upon him that said it I answer it was partly because they were then in their Zenith so high advanced and so highly elevated with the success God had for our sins and for their obduration permitted them to have that they despised what any man did or could say against them and partly because they could not have taken notice of it without inflicting some punishment or other upon him for it which they could not have done he being a man of such eminency not only in regard of his quality but much more in regard of his learning and sanctity and in regard of the very great reputation he had thereby acquired both at home and abroad without exposing themselves to the envy and hatred of the whole World and without doing themselves any good by it and therefore all things considered they thought it best to take no notice at all of it as for ought I ever heard they did not Howsoever what I affirm that pious and learned Arch-Bishop said whether he said it or no is true namely that the Power of the Sword or the Power of making War though for their own defence only or for never so good an end was not in the two Houses but in the King and in the King only as they did themselves acknowledg because at that very time and at that very Treaty one of the prime Articles which they mainly insisted on was to have the Sword for so many years to be put into their hands by the Kings passing of an Act of Parliament to that purpose and for their raising of mony during that time for the support and exercise of that Power in what proportion they thought or should think fit upon their Fellow-Subjects all which they had done before by virtue of their Ordinances only which either they did or did not think to be a legal and sufficient Authority for their taking of the Sword and using it as they did If they did think so why might not the same authority have been sufficient for the continuance of it and if so what need was there of an Act for the trusting them with it but for a time only But if they did not think their own Ordinances to be a legal and sufficient Authority for their taking of the Sword and taxing of the People and the exercising all those other Acts of Arbitrary Power which they did for so many years together by vertue of their own Ordinances only why then habemus confitentes reos We have their own confession not only that they took the Sword which neither the Law nor the King had put into their hands and therefore were Vsurpers of the Regal Authority but had made use of it against the King or which is all one against those that were commissioned by the King and therefore were Traytors and Rebels as likewise that their own Ordinances were not legally sufficient to justifie their so doing and consequently that they have not such a Legislative Power as Mr. Baxter saith they have and which he is so confident of as that he offers his head to the Block if the reasons he gives for the proof of it be disproved which I am now in the last place to try whether I can do or not The end of the third Section SECT IV. England a Monarchy and the Soveraignty solely in the KING prov'd against Mr. Baxter as also that neither the Parliaments concurrence as the Peoples Representatives to the making Laws nor their being Trustees for the Peoples Rights gives them any share in the Soveraignty CHAP. I. The mischief of Schismatical Books Mr. Baxter 's Anti-episcopal and Anti-monarchical Aphorisms The Soveraignty not divided as Mr. B. saith betwixt KING and Parliament Prov'd by the Parliaments acknowledgments and by the Oath of Supremacy AND first thanks be to God and the King that Mr. Baxter is not Lugdunensem causam dicturus ad aram that he is not to plead his cause at the Kings-Bench Barr. For God knows that all the hurt I wish him is that no more hurt may be done by Him and for this end and for this end only it was that I silenced him from preaching and for this end and for this end only it is that I would have him prohibited from writing or at least from publishing what he writes until he is licensed by Authority to do so For when he hath published such pernicious Principles against the legal constitution of the Church and State as he hath done in divers of his Books especially in that of the Holy Commonwealth it is too late and to very little purpose to say as he doth say of some of them that he would have them taken pro non scriptis as if they had not been written For Serò medicina paratur Cùm mala per long as invaluêre moras that is Physick comes too late when ill humors through long delays have got too great a head An Arch-Heretick may by Gods mercy be himself reconcil'd to the Truth and become Orthodox and an Arch-Schismatick may by the same mercy be reconciled to the Church and become Conformable and yet that Heresie that was broached by the one and that Schism that was introduced by the other may be propagated and perpetuated by their Books and by their Disciples from Generation to Generation to the Worlds end and if Master Baxter will needs have a secondary Original sin I think this is that which may most properly be so called Our Countryman Brown who would needs have our Church of England to be no Church was himself convinced of this error so that he not only became a Member but a Minister of the Church of England and as I have been informed died Parson of a Parish called A-Church in Northamptonshire But did Brownism dye with him No there are Brownists still and will be God knows how long perhaps till Doom's day put an end to the World and all the Divisions that have been are or shall be in it So that as nothing can be more criminal than to be the Author of a Schism Sect or Heresie so nothing can be more dangerous than to suffer the spreading and growth of them especially of such of them as are destructive in their natural tendency whatsoever the intention of the Authors and Abettors may be to the peace and welfare of the established Government either in Church or State And such say I are Mr. Baxter's Anti-episcopal Aphorisms in
add one more That he might be allowed whensoever he saw cause for it or had need of it to substitute one Proposition instead of another a false one instead of a true one or a true one instead of a false one and then to infer what he pleased from it for so as he hath done often in other places so he hath done once in this scrap of a Recantation also making me to say that there were some lawful Governors unlimited by God and thence inferring that I was a defier of Deity and Humanity when what I said was that of lawful Governors some were unlimited by men but of this I have said enough before and as I think I have said enough now touching the insufficiency of this recantation to prove that Mr. Baxter is really and seriously otherwise minded in point of judgment than he was when he published these Aphorisms which I have now Reprinted Neither can the contrary hereunto be concluded from any or all of those glorious or rather vain-glorious professions of Loyalty he makes in behalf of himself and of his own Party in the fourth Chapter of the second Part of his Non-Conformists Plea for Peace which can signifie nothing unless he and they do renounce those disloyal and seditious Principles which in his Book of the Holy Commonwealth he makes use of to justifie the War made by the two Houses of Parliament against the late King as first That this Kingdom of England is not a Monarchy and consequently that the Sovereignty is not wholly in the King Secondly That the Sovereignty is divided betwixt the King and the two Houses of Parliament Thirdly that the two Houses of Parliament may lawfully take Arms and make War with the King in defence of their own part of the Sovereignty and of the trust reposed in them by the People and that the People may and ought to assist them when they do so Fourthly That the People are represented in Parliament not only as Subjects for so he confesseth their Representatives are only to complain and supplicate for them but as Contractors before they were Subjects with him that was to be their King before he was King for the reservation of such or such rights franchises and priviledges to be for ever exempted from the Kings and his Successors jurisdiction for the preservation of which if they were invaded or indeavour'd to be taken away by the King or any of his Successors the Parliament not only as Representatives but Trustees also for the People might by force if they could not do it otherwise resist and restrain the King from so doing Finally there be many other cases specified by Mr. Baxter in that Book of the Holy Commonwealth wherein Kings may as he saith be lawfully resisted by their Subjects whence he concludes the War made by the Parliament against the late King to have been purum piumque Duellum a just and a lawful War and consequently such a War as may be made at any time hereafter upon the same Premisses or by vertue of the same Principles and therefore he tells us in plain terms not only that he did not but that he durst not repent of having been engaged in it himself nor for having engaged so many thousands as he confesseth he did in it not then perhaps but hath he not repented of it since Videtur quòd non because not having yet renounced any of those Principles or Premises from whence he infers the Conclusion he is still to be supposed to hold the conclusion he infers from them nay and that he will hold it still and do as he did then upon the like occasion for so he tells us himself in the place before quoted where he saith that as he durst not repent of what he had done in the aforesaid War so he could not forbear the doing of the same if it were to do again in the same state of things 'T is true indeed he tells us in the same place that if he were convinced he had sinned in what he had done he would as willingly make a publick Recantation as he would eat and drink when he is hungry or thirsty But neither he nor any of the Non-Conformists that ever I heard of hath as yet made any such a publick Recantation and therefore we may rationally and charitably enough too conclude that they are still of the same Judgment they were then and consequently that their Practice will be the same it was then when the like opportunity invites them to it which though I hope it will never be yet we are not sure but it may be and therefore ought not to be too confident and secure that no such thing will be For mine own part I must confess as I always have been so I am still of this opinion that ever since the Reformation there have been and are two Plots carrying on sometimes more openly and sometimes more secretly the one by those that call themselves the only true Catholicks the other by those that call themselves the only true Protestants and both of them against the Government as it is established by Law both in Church and State And as there always hath been so there ever will be Plotting by both these Parties until both of them be utterly disabled and suppressed for as for making Peace with either of them I take it by reason of the perverseness of the one and peevishness of the other and the pride of both to be a thing not to be hoped for I am sure the way proposed by Mr. Baxter in his Book called The true and only way of Concord of all Christian Churches will never do it which Book of his though as I said in my Preface I did not intend to answer as being abundantly and superabundantly confuted before it was written yet because in his Address of it to the Bishop of Ely and me he seems desirous to know what we think of it in reference to the end proposed by it I will tell him plainly and in a few words what is my opinion of it viz. that it is so far from being what he saith it is The true and only way of Concord in all Churches that I verily believe that if all the Churches in the World were actually in as perfect Peace and Concord both in themselves and with one another as ever they were or ever can be humanly speaking here in this World that which he calls the true and only way of Concord if it were or could be admitted would in a very short time introduce such and so many unavoidable and irreconcileable differences and dissentions both speculative and practical as well in matter of belief as in manner of worship that there would be no such thing to be seen as order or unity or peace in all the Churches of any one Province or Kingdom and much less in all the Churches of the Christian World This National Church of ours therefore being
not to take notice of any thing Mr. Baxter had said of me because as they said his tongue is no slander nor his pen neither especially when he whets either the one or the other against Bishops and because I had already long ago both answered and prevented all the Objections he had then or hath since made against the truth of what I had said of him in relation to the Conference at the Savoy and of the justice of what I had done to him when I was Bishop of Worcester which is now above 20 years ago These perswasions and reasons together with the consideration of the little time I had left for better employment prevaild with me to lay aside some few Observations and Animadversions I had begun to make upon some particulars relating to me in some of Mr. Baxter's late Writings untill some other of my Learned and Reverend Brethren did very lately let me know that in their opinion I was obliged for the Churches sake as well as for mine own not to suffer it to be said hereafter that a Bishop of the Church of England having been told and told in Print that he was a Preacher of untruths and consequently a liar in the pulpit a slanderer of all the Non-conformists nay a blasphemer or a defier not of Humanity onely but of the Deity it self had nothing to say because he did say nothing to the contrary though I could have replied that I thought and some others of my Reverend Brethren thought also that the Letter I had written and printed so long ago with the Testimony annexed to it was enough and more than enough to vindicate me from the two first of those Reproaches and to prevent the last of them also yet because they have been again repeated and because there hath been since a Book written and written on purpose as Mr. Baxter the Authour of it saith to prove Bishop Morley to have been grosly mistaken in the relation he hath made in the aforesaid Letter of what was asserted by Mr. Baxter in the aforesaid Conference at the Savoy and because it was since the writing of that Letter also that he makes me a defier of Deity and Humanity because I am not of his opinion that all unlimited Governours are Tyrants and have no right to their Governments for these reasons I say and for the satisfaction of some of my friends rather than out of any inclination of mine own who love 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to be quiet and to doe mine own business as well as Mr. Baxter doth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to have an Oar in every man's Boat and thereby quieta movere to disquiet both himself and others I have adventured to launch forth once more though I have reason to fear I may not live to finish what I have begun not because I foresee any difficulty at all in the work I have to doe I mean the justifying of my self against any thing Mr. Baxter hath laid unto my charge but because humanely speaking there is so little of the sand in the Hour-glass of my life left which yet if it last but a month or two longer before it be run out with the continuance of that mediocrity of health of body and soundness of mind which by God's great goodness and mercy I do yet enjoy I hope it will by God's gracious assistance be long enough to make the impartial part of the world see that Mr. Baxter is not a man of that sincerity ingenuity or integrity as he would be thought and perhaps he is by those who have his person in admiration but one that will 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to serve his turn for the present and to keep up his reputation with his party say or unsay affirm or deny any thing either in matter of right or of fact and juggle one proposition into the room of another as if it were identically the same or at least equipollent or equivalent to the other when there is nothing of likeness either in sound or of sense betwixt them Which that it may the more clearly appear and that the impartial Reader may the better judge both of what I have said of him and what he hath said of me and whether I or he have dealt more difingenuously or injuriously with one another I have caused all that I printed before to be reprinted viz. Mr. Baxter's own report of the Conference at the Savoy and my Letter in reply to that report of his together with the Collection of Aphorisms out of that Book which he calls his Holy Commonwealth and all these verbatim in the same words without any the least addition diminution or alteration onely I have added thereunto another Paper of Mr. Baxter's which I met with since and which he calls a Revocation or Recantation of his Book of the Holy Commonwealth or Political Aphorisms which whether it be indeed a Recantation or such a Recantation as it ought to have been or no we shall examine in due place But I have added I say that because it was printed by him since the printing of what I have now reprinted and because it is in that paper that Mr. Baxter hath been pleased to expose me as a Defier of Deity and Humanity This Advertisement I thought fit to premise and withall to desire the impartial Reader first to peruse what I have reprinted I mean Mr. Baxter's Narrative to his Kidderminster friends and my Letter in answer thereunto together with Mr. Baxter's Political Aphorisms annexed to that Letter and then to take notice of the time when that Narrative of his and Letter of mine were first printed which was 10 years before the publishing of his pretended Recantation of all or any of his aforesaid Aphorisms and lastly when he hath done this to proceed to the perusing of what upon another provocation of Mr. Baxter's I now write to justifie what I writ before and after mature deliberation to pronounce sentence for me or against me as he shall see cause Reader You are desired to take notice that this work was prepared designed and expected to have come forth before Easter-Term last THE Bishop of Worcester's LETTER To a Friend For VINDICATION of himself FROM Mr. BAXTER'S Calumny Together with The ATTESTATION of Dr. GVNNING and Dr. PEARSON AND A Collection of Mr. Baxter's Theses and Doctrine concerning Government Reprinted Tenet insanabile multos Scribendi Cacoethes LONDON Printed for Joanna Brome 1683. Mr. Baxter hath lately printed a Book called The Mischiefs of Self-Ignorance and the Benefits of Self-Acquaintance in the Address of which Book to his dearly beloved the Inhabitants of Kidderminster he hath this ensuing passage relating to the Bishop of Worcester IN a disputation by writing those of the other part formed an Argument whose Major Proposition was to this sense for I have no Copy Whatsoever Book enjoyneth nothing but what is of it self lawfull and by lawfull Authority enjoyneth nothing that is sinfull We denied this
all others besides themselves are to be excluded from Governing or chusing of Governours And amongst the ungodly that are to be thus excluded he reckons all those that will not hearken to their Pastours he means the Presbyterian Classis or that are despisers of the Lord's-Day that is all such as are not Sabbatarians or will not keep the Lord's day after the Jewish manner which they prescribe and which is condemned for Judaism by all even of the Presbyterian perswasion in the world but those of England and Scotland onely XV. If a People that by Oath and Duty are obliged to a Sovereign shall sinfully dispossess him and contrary to their Covenants chuse and Covenant with another they may be obliged by their latter Covenant notwithstanding their former and particular subjects that consented not in the breaking of their former Covenants may yet be obliged by occasion of their latter choice to the person whom they chuse Thes. 181. XVI If a Nation injuriously deprive themselves of a worthy Prince the hurt will be their own and they punish themselves but if it be necessarily to their welfare it is no injury to him But a King that by war will seek reparations from the body of the people doth put himself into an hostile State and tells them actually that he looks to his own good more than theirs and bids them take him for their Enemy and so defend themselves if they can Pag. 424. XVII Though a Nation wrong their King and so quoad Meritum causoe they are on the worser side yet may he not lawfully war against the publick good on that account nor any help him in such a war because propter fiuem he hath the worser cause Thes. 352. And yet as he tells us pag 476. we were to believe the Parliaments Declarations and professions which they made that the war which they raised was not against the King either in respect of his Authority or of his Person but onely against Delinquent Subjects and yet they actually fought against the King in person and we are to believe saith Mr. Baxter pag. 422. that men would kill them whom they fight against Mr. Baxter's Doctrine concerning the Government of England in particular HE denies the Government of England to be Monarchical in these words I. The real Sovereignty here amongst us was in King Lords and Commons Pag. 72. II. As to them that argue from the Oath of Supremacy and the title given the King I refer them saith Mr. Baxter to Mr. Lawson's answer to Hobbs's Politicks where he sheweth that the Title is often given to the single Person for the honour of the Commonwealth and his encouragement because he hath an eminent interest but will not prove the whole Sovereignty to be in him and the Oath excludeth all others from without not those whose interest is implied as conjunct with his The eminent dignity and interest of the King above others allowed the name of a Monarchy or Kingdom to the Commonwealth though indeed the Sovereignty was mixed in the hands of the Lords and Commons Pag. 88. III. He calls it a false supposition 1. That the Sovereign power was onely in the King and so that it was an absolute Monarchy 2 That the Parliament had but onely the proposing of Laws and that they were Enacted onely by the King's Authority upon their request 3. That the power of Arms and of War and Peace was in the King alone And therefore saith he those that argue from these false suppositions conclude that the Parliament being Subjects may not take up Arms without him and that it is Rebellion to resist him and most of this they gather from the Oath of Supremacy and from the Parliaments calling of themselves his Subjects but their grounds saith he are sandy and their superstructure false Pag. 459 460. And therefore Mr. Baxter tells us that though the Parliament are Subjects in one capacity yet have they their part in the Sovereignty also in their higher capacity Ibid. And upon this false and traitorous supposition he endeavours to justifie the late Rebellion and his own more than ordinary activeness in it For IV. Where the Sovereignty saith he is distributed into several hands as the King 's and Parliaments and the King invades the others part they may lawfully defend their own by war and the Subject lawfully assist them yea though the power of the Militia be expresly given to the King unless it be also exprest that it shall not be in the other Thes. 363. The conclusion saith he needs no proof because Sovereignty as such hath the power of Arms and of the Laws themselves The Law that saith the King shall have the Militia supposeth it to be against Enemies and not against the Commonwealth nor them that have part of the Sovereignty with him To resist him here is not to resist power but usurpation and private will in such a case the Parliament is no more to be resisted than he Ibid. V. If the King raise War against such a Parliament upon their Declaration of the dangers of the Common-wealth the people are to take it as raised against the Commonwealth Thes. 358. And in that case saith he the King may not onely be resisted but ceaseth to be a King and entreth into a state of War with the people Thes. 368. VI. Again if a Prince that hath not the whole Sovereignty be conquered by a Senate that hath the other part and that in a just defensive War that Senate cannot assume the whole Sovereignty but supposeth that government in specie to remain and therefore another King must be chosen if the former be incapable Thes. 374. as he tells us he is by ceasing to be King in the immediately precedent Thes. VII And yet in the Preface to this Book he tells us that the King withdrawing so he calls the murthering of one King and the casting off of another the Lords and Commons ruled alone was not this to change the species of the Government Which in the immediate words before he had affirmed to be in King Lords and Commons which constitution saith he we were sworn and sworn and sworn again to be faithfull to and to defend And yet speaking of that Parliament which contrary to their Oaths changed this Government by ruling alone and taking upon them the Supremacy he tells us that they were the best Governours in all the world and such as it is forbidden to Subjects to depose upon pain of damnation What then was he that deposed them one would think Mr. Baxter should have called him a Traitour but he calls him in the same Preface the Lord Protector adding That he did prudently piously faithfully and to his immortal honour exercise the Government which he left to his Son to whom as Mr. Baxter saith pag. 484. he is bound to submit as set over us by God and to obey for conscience sake and to behave himself as a Loyal Subject towards him
because as he saith in the same place a full and free Parliament had owned him thereby implying That a maimed and a manacled House of Commons without King and Lords and notwithstanding the violent expulsion of the secluded Members were a full and free Parliament and consequently that if such a Parliament should have taken Arms against the King he must have sided with them Yea though they had been never so much in fault and though they had been the beginners of the War for he tells us in plain and express terms VIII That if he had known the Parliament had been the beginners of the War and in most fault yet the ruine of the Trustees and Representatives and so of all the security of the Nation being a punishment greater than any faults of theirs against the King could deserve from him their faults could not disoblige him meaning himself from defending the Commonwealth Pag. 480. And that he might doe this lawfully and with a good Conscience he seems to be so confident that in his Preface he makes as it were a challenge saying that if any man can prove that the King was the highest power in the time of those Divisions and that he had power to make that war which he made he will offer his head to Justice as a Rebel As if in those times of Division the King had lost or forfeited his Sovereignty and the Parliament had not onely a part but the whole Sovereignty in themselves IX Finally Mr. Baxter tells us Pag. 486. That having often searched into his heart whether he did lawfully engage into the War or not and whether he did lawfully encourage so many thousands to it he tells us I say that the issue of all his search was but this That he cannot yet see that he was mistaken in the main cause nor dares he repent of it nor forbear doing the same if it were to doe again in the same state of things He tells us indeed in the same place that if he could be convinc'd he had sinned in this matter he would as gladly make a publick recantation as he would eat or drink which seeing he hath not yet done it is evident he is still of the same mind and consequently would upon the same occasion doe the same things viz. fight and encourage as many thousands as he could to fight against the King for any thing that calls it self or which he is pleased to call a full and free Parliament as likewise that he would own and submit to any Vsurper of the Sovereignty as set up by God although he came to it by the murther of his Master and by trampling upon the Parliament Lastly That he would hinder as much as possibly he could the restoring of the rightfull Heir unto the Crown And now whether a man of this Judgment and of these affections ought to be permitted to Preach or no Let any but himself judge THE Bishop of Winchester's VINDICATION Of Himself from divers False Scandalous and Injurious Reflexions made upon him by Mr. RICHARD BAXTER in several of his Writings As likewise A Vindication of the Rights and Sovereignty of all Kings properly so called and particularly of the King of England's being sole Soveraign over all persons in all capacities within his own Realms and Dominions from What Mr. Baxter to justifie the Rebellion against our late King of ever blessed Memory hath in many of his False Factious and Seditious Aphorisms asserted to the contrary Together with A Proposal of a more Legal and more effectual Expedient for the keeping Popery and Arbitrary Government for ever out of England than the passing of an Act to exclude the right Heir from Succession to the Crown either now or hereafter is will be or can be LONDON Printed for Joanna Brome 1683. SECTION I. Mr. BAXTER'S Assertion at the Savoy undeniably proved upon him and consequently his Charge against the Bishop of many mistakes in his Letter in matter of fact and of his Gross mistaking charge viz. Concerning the judgment of the Nonconformists of things sinfull by Accident cleared The Bishop of Winchester's Vindication of himself from divers false scandalous and injurious Reflexions made upon him by Mr. Richard Baxter in several of his Writings CHAP. I. Mr. Baxter 's Charge against the Bishop gathered out of several Writings of his and set down in his own words MAster Baxter in his Preface to his Book called by him The true and onely way of Concord of all Christian Churches reflecting upon a Letter of mine Written and Printed near 20 years before saith There are so many Mistakes in matter of fact in it that although he had made an Answer to it yet he cast it aside for Peace sake believing that the opening of the aforesaid so many mistakes would not easily be born the rather because as he says in the words immediately foregoing he knew he had greatly incurr'd both our displeasures already to wit the Bishop of Ely's and mine for what he had said and done against our Way and that as to my particular the aforesaid Letter of mine was a proof of it Again in the same Preface to the same Book he saith You meaning the Bishop of Ely and Me to whom he addresseth that Preface have above all men I know effectually helped to bring us meaning himself and the rest of his Party under These are Mr. Baxter's complements when he speaks to me and therefore I am not to expect more Civility from him when he speaks of me as he doth in divers of his Books which I have seen and perhaps in many more of them which I have not seen for I hope all men are not bound to reade all Mr. Baxter writes But in those I have seen when he speaks of me it is neither Honoris nor Charitatis gratiâ but to reproach me either directly and in express terms or covertly and by the bye as when in his Preface to the second part of his Plea for Nonconformists he saith It was Bishop Morley 's gross mistaking charge that made him write one whole Tract or Treatise namely That of things sinfull per Accidens or by accident Again in the former part of the aforesaid Plea for Nonconformists he saith Bishop Morley advised him to reade Bilson and Hooker in whom saith he I found more than he approv'd for resisting and restraining of Kings Again in another of his printed Papers I mean that Paper which he would have taken for a Recantation of some of those Political Aphorisms I had laid to his charge though he do not name me yet he points directly at me as if I had accused him for asserting That all humane powers are limited by God which to deny as he there insinuates I do and elsewhere plainly tells me I do is to defy Deity and Humanity and consequently makes me a defyer of them both Lastly with the same ingenuity and candour he aims at me more obscurely and more obliquely indeed
untill he hath done it is to be supposed forthe reasons before by me alledged he cannot doe And consequently that the Charge itself is a mere Calumny Which that it may be made more evidently to appear I have caused the self same Letter wherein he saith there are so many mistakes without any the least addition subtraction or alteration to be reprinted and publish'd to the end that such as will vouchsafe to reade it without prejudice may judge betwixt us whether there be indeed so many or any such mistakes in matter of Fact in it as Mr. Baxter saith there are as likewise whether I did well or ill in restraining him from preaching in my Diocese which that all men may the better judge of I have reprinted likewise those Political Aphorisms of his which were at first annexed to that Letter not as accusing him for holding them now but as remembring him of his holding them then which though it was not the cause as the Letter tells him of my Silencing him at first yet that together with what he had asserted at the Conference in the Savoy was the cause as the Letter tells him also why I continued and resolved to continue that restraint and Suspension untill he should make a publick Recantation as well of what he had affirmed in the aforesaid Conference namely The unlawfulness of lawfull Commands by lawfull Authority if by accident they might be the cause or occasion of sin as likewise of those not onely false and erroneous but dangerous seditious and rebellious Maxims of his which howsoever he may have since repented and recanted I am sure he had not recanted them then at least not publickly or so as I or the World could take notice of it They therefore that reade the Letter with the Aphorisms annexed to it and reprinted with it are to consider them rebus sic stantibus I mean as things were then when they were first printed And if Mr. Baxter himself would consider them so too he must needs confess if at least he will stand to what he hath written since even in this very Book of which he would have me give him my opinion he must needs confess I say that he was justly Silenced or restrained from Preaching as being then one of Those who he himself saith are intolerabiles that is such as ought not to be suffered to Preach as being disturbers of the publick peace 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as St. Paul calls them that is Seducers of the people 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 overturning or turning upside down whole Houses or Families 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 whose mouths St. Paul saith in the same place ought to be stopped And if those mens mouths ought to be stopped that by Seditious Preaching disturb Families how much more ought they to be silenced that by Printing and Publishing seditious and rebellious Books and Maxims doe what they can not onely to disturb but overthrow whole Churches and Kingdomes But Mr. Baxter will say he doth not own any of those Maxims now I do not say he does but I do say he did own them at least he had not disown'd them then when I silenced him and consequently when he was one of those whom he himself calls intolerabiles or such as ought not to be permitted to Preach which is enough to justifie what I said or did then But whether he hath since made or published any declaration whereby he hath clearly and fully disown'd all those Seditious Maxims of his We shall see hereafter CHAP. III. One Particular Gross mistake as he calls it charged in a late Treatise of his upon the Bishop about the Nonconformists judgment of things sinfull by accident taken to task ANd now I should proceed to the consideration of some particulars which Mr. Baxter is pleased to charge me with in his aforesaid Preface to his aforesaid Book of Concord having I suppose said enough if not more than enough already to his general Charge without witness or proof relating to my aforesaid Letter had not Mr. Baxter himself sent me by my friend Mr. Isaac Walton another Book of his called The second part of the Nonconformists Plea for peace which he calls an extorted and distorted Treatise or rather a bundle of Treatises bound up together And distorted enough indeed it is but how or by whom it was extorted from him I know not he seems by the many Books he hath written to be so ready a Writer that he needed not to have any thing he writes to be extorted from him For indeed he is rather one of those quibus difficile est non scribere who are as hardly to be restrained from Writing as others are from Preaching But in this bundle of Treatises whether extorted or not extorted there is one wherein I am particularly concerned He calls it The judgment of Nonconformists of things sinfull by accident and in his Preface to that whole bundle of Treatises he saith This Treatise in particular was written purposely to answer the gross mistaking charge of Bishop Morley And truly if he had not said so or if that Treatise had been Printed by it self I should neither by the Title of it nor by the Book it self have suspected it to have been purposely written against me or against any mistake of mine For neither in the Title nor in the Book it self do I find Bishop Morley so much as once named or any way so characterized by any thing I have said or done as to conclude my self to be understood by it Nay I verily believe that if I should grant all and every one of the sixty four Propositions asserted in that Treatise to be true yet nevertheless whatsoever I have laid to Mr. Baxter's charge in that Letter of mine would be true also so that I cannot chuse but wonder that he should say as he does in the aforesaid Preface That this particular Treatise of scandal or evil by accident was purposely written to answer the gross mistaking charge of Bishop Morley whereas the Title page to that Treatise saith no such thing neither is that wherein he saith the Bishop is so grosly mistaken to be found either in terminis terminantibus or oequipollentibus either in downright terms or in words that imply as much in the whole Treatise If it be replyed that as the general Preface to the whole bundle of Treatises called The second Part of the Nonconformists Plea tells me that I am the man that am guilty of so gross a mistake so that the Title page to that particular Treatise We are now speaking of though not explicitly and formally yet implicitly and intelligibly enough tells me what it was wherein I was so grosly mistaken namely in misreporting the Nonconformists judgment of things sinfull by accident I rejoyn first that unless Mr. Baxter thinks that every body is obliged to reade all that he Writes he could not rationally presume that a man of my age and
one that had so little time left to spare from his more pressing and more important concerns was likely to enquire after every Book that came out in Print and to see whether he was concerned in it or no and it seems Mr. Baxter thought so and therefore sent me by Mr. Walton that Book in the Preface whereunto he saith he did purposely write that Treatise in answer to the gross mistaking charge of Bishop Morley which I had never seen nor heard of before nor perhaps should ever have seen or heard of it at all if Mr. Baxter himself had not sent it to me and which if he had sent me sooner I would not have said as I have done in the foregoing Chapter that he had not given so much as any one Instance of the many mistakes he saith there were in my printed Letter as indeed he did not where he speaks of them to me nay he saith he had laid aside an Answer he had written to that Letter for peace sake that he might not by opening or publishing so many mistakes of mine give me any farther cause of being displeased with him And yet two years before mark the ingenuity of the man he had published a whole Book consisting of sixty four Propositions besides Quoeries purposely intended then though he doth not say so in plain terms till two years after for an Answer to Bishop Morley 's gross mistaking charge though neither then nor since neither there nor any where else hath he yet told us what that gross mistaking charge is but leaves it to be guessed at or collected out of the Title page to that Treatise which he saith he purposely writ for an Answer to it wherein whether he hath dealt justly and candidly either with me or with his readers I am now to consider and examine after I have premised out of what I have already said two or three short preliminary Observations Whereof the first is this That it was not nor could not be for peace sake nor because he would not give me any farther provocation as in his Preface to his Book of Concord he pretends it was that he laid aside the Answer he saith he had made to my printed Letter for then he would not without any farther provocation on my part have afterwards printed a whole Book on purpose to convince me of one of the many mistakes in that Letter or rather to expose me to the World for having been guilty of so gross a mistake as he calls it A second observation is this That naming but one of those many mistakes he saith there were in that Letter of mine he doth implicitly confess that he could name no more because by aggravating that as much as he can he declares he would not have forborn to specifie the rest if there had been any more to be specified And consequently which I would have to be observed in the third place That if this which he calls a gross mistake be no mistake at all of mine but a very great Mistake or rather a very great Calumny of his as I doubt not but I shall prove it is Mr. Baxter had no reason to charge that Letter of mine with so many mistakes nor I any reason to thank him for concealing of them CHAP. IV. His dreadfull Title page wherein he ushers in this Charge examined and retorted upon himself NOw whether that which Mr. Baxter calls a gross mistaking charge be indeed such a charge as he would have it to be believed it is he should in the first place have in plain and express terms set down that charge of mine as I have set it down my self in that Letter wherein he saith that gross mistaking charge is For in all debates betwixt rational and ingenuous men whether in point of opinion or in matter of fact the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or thing in question ought to be clearly stated and agreed on betwixt the differing Parties before they can proceed to the proving or disproving of any thing that is in difference betwixt them But this as I said before Mr. Baxter hath not done but onely affirmed that such a gross mistaking charge there is of Bishop Morley's and that he hath written and published such a Treatise in answer to it leaving his Readers as I said before to guess at what that Charge is or rather what he would have it thought to be and that is as may be collected from the Title page to that Treatise which he calls an Answer to that charge the Bishop's misreporting the judgment of Nonconformists of things sinfull by Accident to make men believe that the Nonconformists Asserted That whatsoever may be the occasion of sin to any must be taken away or that nothing may be imposed which men may take scandal at or by Accident turn to sin And he adds That to save mens Souls from the guilt of believing this misreport the Treatise following saith the Title page was published as likewise to help those to repentance who have polluted their Souls with falshood and uncharitableness by believing and seconding such reports This I say is the Title page prefixed to the aforesaid Treatise and a very notable one it is Never any Pope's Bull came forth with a more dreadfull bellowing against all that shall say write preach print or report or that shall believe any thing that is said written printed preached or reported by any body else concerning any of the Nonconformists though never so truly or never so well attested if any Nonconformist especially such a one as Mr. Baxter one of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 one of those who seem to be Pillars shall please to disown it For in that case saith Mr. Baxter not onely the reporting any such thing is a gross mistake but the believing such a report doth so pollute mens Souls with falshood and uncharitableness that they cannot be saved from the guilt thereof unless that ensuing Treatise of his do help them to repent of it So dangerous a thing it seems it is not onely to report but to give credit to any thing that is reported to the prejudice either of the doctrine or practice of any of the Godly party as if they could not err in either which is in effect to assume unto themselves a more than Popish Infallibility which is the worst of the Popish errours as being the ground and foundation of all other heresies or errours that are held by them And yet they that would be thought the most zealous Antipapists do really though not professedly sympathize with the Papists in this which is the Root and in several of the most pernicious Branches and false doctrines growing out of this Root as appears speculatively by Mr. Baxter's Politick Aphorisms and practically by what was acted by the Nonconformists before and in and after the late Rebellion against the best of Kings by the worst of Subjects I mean during the Vsurpation of the
with it truly and consequently that all his Instances to the contrary are frivolous and impertinent and fraudulent I am now to make it appear that they are scandalously if not maliciously injurious also For first as nothing can be more fraudulent than for a man when he is charged with an Assertion that is false and in its consequences impious and blasphemous to substitute a true one instead of it and by giving many instances of the latter to indeavour to make it to be believed he is not guilty of the former so nothing can be more provoking and injurious than to charge another falsly with what himself may be charged truly And does not Mr. Baxter doe so by producing those aforesaid instances of his which no man can reade that hath any opinion of Mr. Baxter's veracity and sincerity but must needs conclude Bishop Morley or those that disputed with Mr. Baxter had affirmed That the Command of that which is lawfull in it self is a lawfull Command though it be commanded under never so unjust a penalty which is more than insinuated by the last of his instances before specified namely the Command of Kneeling when we receive the Sacrament as likewise that I or they or some of us had affirmed the Command of a thing lawfull in it self to be a lawfull Command though the Commander did foresee it would be the cause of some great evil or mischief which he was bound to prevent and this is not onely insinuated but necessarily implyed in all the rest of the instances produced by him as in that of sending of a Navy to Sea foreseeing it will fall into the Enemie's hand and that of selling of Poyson knowing he that buyes it will poyson himself or some body else with it concerning which and the like damnable actions he doth in effect plainly enough tell me that I allow such things to be lawfull when in his libellous Narrative to his Kidderminster Friends he tells them he must crave the Bishop's pardon for believing those or any of the like commands to be sinfull as if the Bishop had asserted all or any of them to be lawfull which if it can be proved the Bishop did either expresly or implicitly formally or virtually dogmatically or consequentially say there or any where any thing which can grammatically be construed or logically inferr'd to tend towards the asserting or approving of any of the aforesaid instances the Bishop himself doth hereby acknowledge himself to be utterly unworthy to be called a Bishop or a Priest or a Christian or a Man but rather a Devil incarnate or an utter and professed Enemy to all Mankind But if the Bishop did never affirm or say any such thing nay if he and the Disputants of the Episcopal party did not by that Proposition which Mr. Baxter frequently and finally denied assert the contradictory to this calumny namely that what the Church injoined in the Common-Prayer-Book or publick service of God and the Sectaries refused to obey were therefore lawfull injunctions and commands not onely because they were lawfull in themselves and commanded by lawfull Authority but because they were not commanded under any unjust penalty or might so much as by accident be the cause of any such evil or sin as they by whom they were injoyn'd ought to provide against if this I say be the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth of what was then affirmed by Bishop Morley or by the Disputants or any other of the Episcopal party as really it is and I defie Mr. Baxter or any of his party to prove the contrary what then doth Master Baxter deserve for indeavouring by his impertinently fallaciously and injuriously at least if not maliciously alledged Instances to make so notoriously-impious unchristian and inhumane a Calumny to be believed not onely of Bishop Morley but of all the Episcopal party that were there present for sure Bishop Morley did not differ from the rest of his party nor the rest of his party from him in this or any other particular at that Conference And to this very purpose it is in the 48th proposition of the Book which he saith was purposely written to answer Bishop Morley 's grossly mistaken charge that Mr. Baxter resumes his instance of an Apothecary's selling Poyson to one who he knows will kill his Neighbour or himself or his Prince with it as of a thing thought lawfull and justified by us because as he makes us speak the selling of Poyson is lawfull per se of it self and unlawfull onely per accidens by accident Whereunto he adds in the same place That he hopes that our Casuists meaning the Casuists of the Conforming party shall never see a Law made to command or tolerate all Apothecaries to sell Poyson to those that they know mean to use it to treason or murther As if we had any such amongst us I mean of the Episcopal party that not onely justifie the selling of Poyson by those that know it will be used for Murther or Treason but would have a Law made to command or tolerate the doing of it If there be any such Casuists amongst us I will readily acknowledge they are as bad if not worse than the worst of the Jesuites but let Mr. Baxter name any at least one such Casuist of ours if he can or if he cannot if he have any thing of Ingenuity left in him let him confess his fraudulent and injurious dealing with us and repent of it For as for that passage which he quotes out of Ecclesiastical Polity to prove the Authour of that Book such a Casuist as he speaks of it is so illogical and unconcluding that none but one that cares not what he says or that thinks his Ipse dixit his own bare saying is enough to conclude quidlibet ex quolibet any thing from any thing would have quoted it upon such an occasion In the mean time I do not I cannot deny but there be some nay many Casuists among us but they are not of us as bad as any of the Jesuits especially in that Casuistical doctrine which is most Jesuitical I mean that of the lawfulness of Subjects taking Arms against their Sovereign nay of selling buying imprisoning deposing and murthering of Kings by their Subjects I need not name those Casuists Mr. Baxter knows whom I mean But of this no more at this time neither should there have been so much if Mr. Baxter had not forgotten what he might have learned at School without going to the University that Qui alterum accusat probri ipsum se intueri oportet He who chargeth another with a crime ought to look home to himself and it is but just Vt qui ex maledicendo voluptatem capit malè audiendo amittat That he who takes pleasure in speaking ill of others should lose that pleasure by having his own faults told him And indeed I have very often and very much wondred that
necessary consequences of their blasphemous Doctrine of Transubstantiation and as I believe Mr. Baxter doth the necessary consequences of that Assertion I charged him with Nay I am apt to believe that Mr. Baxter himself now he sees what will necessarily follow upon that Assertion of his is sorry and ashamed that ever he did assert it and wishes with all his heart he had never asserted it but his heart is too great to suffer him to confess it and he values his reputation with his Party at too high a rate to acknowledge that ever he was guilty of so much weakness as to have denied what he did deny and consequently to have asserted what he did assert And therefore as I said before he would fain have it to be believed that it was another thing that he denied and asserted than indeed it was But all that he hath done hitherto or can doe hereafter to that end will be all in vain and to no purpose as long as two such Witnesses as the Bishop of Ely and the Bishop of Chester who disputed with him have attested it under their hands presently after the matter of fact and when it was fresh in every man's memory without having been contradicted or excepted against either by Mr. Baxter himself or any of his party in his behalf though it be above twenty years ago since this Attestation of theirs was first printed And therefore whatsoever Mr. Baxter hath said since or doth say now or shall say hereafter it will never make what he did say then to be non dictum not to have been said or what he writ then to be non scriptum not to have been written so that he may as well call back yesterday as unsay what he had said repent it he may but recall it he cannot If therefore that Pamphlet of his concerning sinfulness per accidens was purposely written as he saith it was to prove Bishop Morley was grossly mistaken in charging him with what he did assert then because he doth not assert it now or because he now doth assert the contrary the publishing of it to that end is not onely vain and useless but absurd and ridiculous unless Mr. Baxter thinks his own Party does believe of him as the Bygott-Papists do of their Pope namely that he never erred because he cannot err which is Blasphemy to be said of any but of God For Errare labi decipi suit eritque semper humanum to err to slip to be deceived and mistaken hath been and will always be the effect and character of Humane frailty And therefore Mr. Baxter ought not to have taken it so heinously to be charged and to be charged ashe was with an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with that which is but an humane infirmity for so and no more but so is all Errour But the denying of it and much more the persisting in it and defending of it and most of all the defending of it by disguising it and making a false representation of it seems to have somewhat of a much worse principle in it and makes the Errour to be much more culpable than otherwise it would have been for Causa Patrocinio non bona pejor erit A bad cause will but prove worse by standing out in it and endeavouring to make it good It would have been therefore much more ingenuously and much more excusably too done of Mr. Baxter if as when he speaks of his Political Aphorisms he saith he would have some part at least of that Book to be taken pro non scripto as if it had never been written so in speaking of what I say he said in the Conference at the Savoy he would not have said it was non dictum a thing that he had not said but that he would have it taken pro non dicto as a thing he wished he had not said and so he might have saved all the pains he hath taken and all the trouble he hath given his Readers in his Metaphysical Casuistical Treatise of things sinfull per accidens wherein there is nothing to prove Mr. Baxter did not say what I say he did at the Conference in the Savoy nor consequently to prove that I was grossly mistaken in charging him with it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Which is the thing I was to make out Which being the onely Instance he hath given of the many mistakes in matter of fact which he saith there are in that long ago printed and now reprinted Letter of mine They that observe how notwithstanding all the disingenuous fraudulent scandalous and injurious Artifices he hath made use of he foully fails in the proof of this one mistake onely will I hope hardly take his own bare word for proof enough that there are many or indeed any other mistakes in matter of fact in that Letter of mine as he pretends there are and no doubt would not have omitted to specifie if he could have proved any of them The End of the First Section SECTION II. A Confutation at large of Mr. Baxter's Aphorism concerning Governours wherein having said that Governours are some Limited some de facto Vnlimited he affirms that The unlimited are Tyrants and have no right to that unlimited Government CHAP. I. A calumnious Charge of Mr. Baxter in some late writings of his against the Bishop making him to be a defier of Deity and Humanity answered One of his Aphorisms concerning Governours limited and unlimited taxed and censured The Bishop's solemn declaration in the point ANd now having as I suppose sufficiently vindicated my self from what Mr. Baxter hath excepted against as a gross mistake of mine in matter of Fact in my so long ago printed and now reprinted Letter I am if I can and I doubt not but I can to vindicate my self from a much higher charge of Mr. Baxter's against me which is no less than That I am a defier of Deity and Humanity An horrible and a diabolical Crime if true and therefore an horrible and diabolical Slander if false which whether it be or no I am now to examine But first I must make it appear that Mr. Baxter doth indeed and in totidem verbis in plain terms charge me to be so For proof whereof I refer my self to a printed Paper of his now before me subscribed R. B. and pretended to be a Recantation or Revocation of some of his Political Aphorijms in his Holy Common wealth in which Paper which together with some of his Aphorisms I have caused to be reprinted he saith He doth not reverse all the matter of that Book nor all that more than ONE hath accused him of which he saith he cannot without defying Deity and Humanity as they saith he meaning his accusers defie them both In which words it is observable that the word One is printed in a different Character from any of the rest on purpose no doubt that the Readers of that pretended curtail'd Recantation may take
notice of whom he means by that One which it was easy for any that had read my Collection of some of his Aphorisms to guess at but this is certain that whomsoever he means by that One he saith of him in express terms that he is a defier of Deity and Humanity Now that he means me by that One though it be not clearly and plainly exprest in that Paper yet it is more than intimated in Mr. Baxter's Answer to a Letter of Dr. Hinckley's wherein he doth repeat what the Doctor had said touching those Aphorisms of his which I had collected and printed so as though neither of them name me yet it cannot be doubted but both of them mean me the rather because Mr. Baxter doth there and in that place of his Letter set down the very words of the first of those Aphorisms I have collected from denial of which Aphorism or rather from the denial of another Proposition substituted by him in the place or instead of that Aphorism he doth in the aforesaid Paper infer and conclude that One he speaks of to be a defier of Deity and Humanity But to put it out of question that I am the man he means by that One in the aforesaid Paper and whom he there makes to be a defier of Deity and Humanity There is a late I will not say the last Book of his for he may have writ two or three since for ought I know wherein he saith He wonders that Bishop Morley there you have whom he means in words at length and not in figures or figurative intimations onely did put the denial of this amongst the accused passages of his Political Aphorisms where saith he I expressly speak of God's limitation But what or of what was that denial of Mr. Baxter which he wonders the Bishop puts among the accused passages of his Aphorisms Why It was saith he my denial that there was any such thing in the World as a lawfull unlimited Monarchy or humane Power expressly speaking of limitation by God But where doth Bishop Morley accuse Mr. Baxter for denying there is any lawfull Monarchy or humane Power unlimited by God He doth it saith Mr. Baxter among the Passages of my accused Aphorisms But why doth not he name the passage where or the particular Aphorism wherein I do accuse him for his denying the aforesaid Proposition or for his denying there is any lawfull Monarchy or any other humane Power unlimited or not limited by God I will tell you why he doth not because indeed he cannot there being no such Aphorism nor any such Passage in any of those Aphorisms of his which I question him for or accuse him of There is indeed an Aphorism of his viz. the first of those which I have collected and exposed wherein he saith That of Governours some are limited and some are unlimited and those which are de facto unlimited are Tyrants and have no right to their unlimited Governments And the reason why I put this Aphorism of his into the catalogue of those which I except against is his affirming that such Governours I presume he means all such Governours as are de facto unlimited are Tyrants and have no right to their unlimited Governments It is I say his affirming of this and not his denying the lawfulness of a Monarchy or any other power or species of Government that is not limited by God that I question him for or accuse him of For if he thinks the affirming of that and the denying of this to be all one he is very much mistaken but the truth is that he is not at all mistaken as to this particular he knows well enough that it is not all one to affirm the one and deny the other for if he had thought it had been so why did he not specifie the Aphorism it self which I except against in terminis as it is set down in my Collection and as he sets it down himself in his aforesaid Letter to Dr. Hinckley It had been much more fairly and ingenuously done of him if he had done so and much more pertinently too as to the business in hand there being no question betwixt him and me in relation to the truth or falshood of the aforesaid Aphorism whether all lawfull Monarchies or humane Powers are limited by God or no but whether all such Governours as are de facto unlimited not by God but by Men are Tyrants and such as have no Right to their unlimited Governments The former I never did nor no man that is not a downright professed Atheist can deny to be true The latter I affirm to be false and not false and erroneous onely but dangerous and seditious also and I doubt not but by God's assistance to prove it to be so In the mean time let no man think it was the not discerning or not animadverting the difference betwixt what Mr. Baxter affirms in his Aphorism and what he denies in his Paraphrase of it that makes him substitute the one for the other Non sic notus Vlysses The cunning man is better known than so No he doth it artificially and designingly that he might the more probably and plausibly infer from the one what he knew he could not with any colour of consequence infer from the other and thereby to vent the overflowing of his Gall against me in revenge of my publishing of those Aphorisms of his whereby he seems to be so much galled And hence it is that as in the aforesaid recanting or rather canting Paper of his instead of my denying all unlimited Governours to be Tyrants and to have no right to their unlimited Governments which he affirms in his Aphorism he saith I deny all humane Powers to be limited by God and thence infers that I am a defier of Deity and Humanity So here again in that aforesaid late printed Book of his instead of my denial of what he affirms in the aforesaid Aphorism he saith that I accuse him for denying that there is any lawfull Monarchy or humane Power unlimited by God and then infers That he who asserteth the contrary as he implies I do is 1. saith he an Enemy to God because he denies God to be the universal Sovereign which is Atheism 2. He is an Enemy to Kings because he renders them odious to Mankind by drawing such a picture or description of them as to say a King is absolutely unlimited in his power and therefore may deny or blaspheme God and may destroy City and Kingdom and kill all the innocent People when he pleaseth 3. He is an Enemy to all Mankind who would bring them all into such a slavery to such a Monster By which large and indeed monstrous Paraphrase of his not upon what I do indeed assert but upon what he would have his Readers believe I do assert he explains what he means when he said I was a defier of Deity and Humanity Sed ne soevi
People that were then under an obligation of obedience to a lawfull Sovereign and consequently had no power to dispose of themselves or to become Subjects to another no more than he had a right to become their King untill he that promised him he should be so had made him so which he could and infallibly would have done in his own good time without any thing done on Jeroboam's part but the relying upon the promise of God onely which he distrusting or being too impatiently ambitious to stay for the performance of it took his own seditious and rebellious way for the hastening as he did afterwards for the keeping of himself to be a King For as he caused the ten Tribes to revolt from Rehoboam in order to the making himself their King so he caused them to revolt from God also by setting up other Gods and other Priests and other places of worship thereby making a formal Schism in the Church to prevent a possibility of re-union in the State So that as he sinned and made Israel to sin for the getting so he sinned and made Israel to sin much more for the holding and keeping of the Kingdom which he might have had and kept much longer than he did if he had stayed God's leisure for the having and done nothing to displease God for the holding of it Whereas if he would have done as David did he should have had the success that David had without sinning himself or making so many Thousands to sin with him and for him as hedid David was not onely told by the Propet Samuel that he should be King as Jeroboam was by the Prophet Ahijah but he was anointed too which Jeroboam was not And yet when it was twice in his power to have stept up into the Throne by destroying Saul whom the men of these times would have said as Abishai did that God had delivered into his hand to be destroyed by him he would not doe it nor suffer it to be done but said God forbid that I should lay my hand on the Lord's anointed as the Lord liveth the Lord shall smite him or his day shall come to die or he shall descend into battel and perish howsoever the Lord forbid that I should stretch forth mine hand against the Lord's anointed This was David's resolution and this should have been Jeroboam's resolution also to have expected God's performance of his promise in his own time and in his own way and not have snatched the Crown out of God's hand and put it himself upon his own head before God had anointed his head for it Moreover it is observable that is was not that for which Ahijah the Prophet told Jeroboam God was so angry with Solomon that he would rend away ten Tribes of the twelve from his Son which was Idolatry it was not that I say which Jeroboam pretended to be the cause of his rising and rebelling and his stirring up the ten Tribes to rebell against Rehoboam but it was a more popular pretence and such a one as the generality of the People is usually most concerned in and concerned for namely the publick grievance by Taxes and Tributes which how necessary soever for their own defence and safety do always seem an insupportable burthen to the Subjects And therefore the ambitious Aspirers of all times have always made use of this Topick first to discontent the People with their present condition though it be never so tolerable nay never so good a one and then to promise them a relief of all their imaginary grievances if they will be ruled by them which the foolish People believing first call them their Patriots and afterwards if they can make them their Princes who commonly prove the greatest of Tyrants and then the People that raised them find and feel the fruits of their own folly and when it is too late to help it repent of it And yet such is the incorrigible madness as well as folly of the multitude that though it hath been never so often entrapp'd it always hath been and still is and ever will be apt to be taken with the same bait how dear soever it hath cost them formerly It was not long before this that Absalom by the counsel of Achitophel made use of the same artifice to stir up the people and to make them to rebell against their King and his Father by making them believe first that they were oppressed by David and had not justice done them and secondly if he were in power every man should have right done him and no man should have cause to complain amongst them This they were so foolish as to believe though their condition then was better than ever it had been before or ever it was afterwards for it was David a man after God's own heart that was then their King and who as himself or rather God's Spirit by his mouth tells us fed them with a faithfull and true heart and ruled them prudently with all his power and if prudently then justly no doubt also and yet it was his not doing of justice that was made the pretence of the rebellion against him and by whom by Absalom one whom the People knew to have been a murtherer of his own brother and therefore not to be a very likely man to govern them either more justly or more mercifully than his Father did so that as the pretence of their rising up against David was groundless so their setting up of Absalom in his stead was folly and madness And now one would have thought the ill success they had in that action would have made them more wary than to be tempted and prevailed with again so soon at least as afterwards they were to another rebellion against the Grandchild of David upon another and that perhaps upon as groundless a pretence as the former I mean this of Jeroboam which we are now speaking of For the pretence of Jeroboam and the ten Tribes rebellion against Rehoboam was because he would not ease them of the heavy yoke which they pretended Solomon his Father had laid upon them which had it been true to never so great a degree would have been no just cause of the Rebellion of Subjects against their Sovereign as is already shewn But I do not find in the History of Solomon's Reign from the beginning to the end of it as it is very particularly recorded in the first book of Kings and in the second of Chronicles any mention of so heavy a yoke or indeed of any yoke at all that was laid upon any of the Complainants I mean upon any of the ten Tribes of Israel I reade indeed in the fourth Chapter of the first book of Kings Verses 20 21. That there was a great Tribute or Levy made by Solomon for the building of that glorious Temple of God in Jerusalem which was the wonder of the World and for other his many and magnificent
legally accountable for all their actions and by whom they were legally punishable even with death it self for their delinquencies whereas the Ephori were accountable to none nor punishable by any and therefore the Sovereign Power of the State was in them and consequently their Kings were Kings and no Kings that is Kings in name and title only but really and indeed no more than Subjects So that the Government of Lacedaemon was not Regal or Monarchical but Aristocratical and so Thucydides calls it For as speaking of the Athenians he calls them the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Multitude or Populace because their Government was Democratical so speaking of the Lacedaemonians he calls them the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Best sort of People or the Nobless because their Government was Aristocratical whereas if it had been truly Regal or their Kings had been truly and properly called Kings he should have called them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Royalists or Kings-men or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Subjects of Monarchs because their Government would then have been Monarchical For a Government to be Regal and to be Monarchical is all one there being no King properly so called but he is a Monarch that is one that governs all and is subject to none and consequentially accountable to none for any thing he doth in his own Kingdom And this is true of all Kings properly so called whether they be greater or less Successive or Elective and whether they be Despoticall or Politicall for both Successive and Elective Kings properly so called may be either Despoticall or Politicall for as the Successive Kings in the three first Monarchies were Successive and Despoticall and are so still in the East and South parts of the World and in both the Indies so those of the fourth and last Monarchy also I mean the Roman Emperors whether Successive or Elective were all of them Despoticall and so in Europe are the successive Emperors of Turky and Russia and Tartary at this day that is such as are not only Monarchs that is such as have the whole Sovereign Power solely in themselves as all Kings or Monarchs properly so called have also but have and exercise that Sovereignty or Sovereign Power without being bounded or limited by any Laws or Rules to govern by but as Lords over their Vassals absolutely and arbitrarily according to their own Will and Pleasures Whereas Politicall Kings and Princes whether Successive as the Kings of England and of France and of Spain or Elective as the Emperor of Germany and the King of Poland are obliged to govern according to the Political Constitutions and Laws of their several respective Seigniories and Dominions but not so as to forfeit their right to their Crowns or to be accountable to any judicatory or punishable by any Power here on Earth if they do not do so no though they be Kings but by Election only so they be elected to be Kings indeed and not in name and title only as the aforesaid Kings of Lacedaemon were and as the Dukes of Venice now are who are Subjects to the Senate there as the Kings of Lacedaemon were to the Ephori in Sparta though those were Successive and these Elective For it is not their succeeding or being elected or being called Kings that makes them to be Kings indeed but their being invested with Kingly Power that is to be over all and under none whether they be born or elected to be so or by what name or title soever they be called whether Kings Emperors Sophies Sultans or but Dukes only For the Duke of Florence is as much a Monarch in his own Dominions as any of the former are in theirs He therefore that is born or chosen to be such a King is not nor cannot after he is such a King be accountable or punishable for any thing he does how unjustly or how much against Law soever it may be but to God only and by God because all within his own Dominions are his Subjects and none without his own Kingdoms and Dominions though they be never so much greater or more powerful Kings than he have any thing to do with him and much less have They any authority over him which they must have that can justly pretend to punish any man how great a Delinquent soever he may be or what wrong soever he hath done against others or against themselves CHAP. IV. A Query resolved whether a King Elective may not be Deposed upon non-performance of conditions Our King proved from Mr. B 's own Principles to be a sole Sovereign BUT may not the People that chuse one to be their King upon such or such conditions upon his non-performance of such conditions Depose him or take away that Power over them they gave unto him I answer that if they chuse him to be their King indeed and not in name and title only then he did thereby become their King indeed that is their Monarch or Sovereign Lord over all of them and consequently they did all of them become his Subjects without any Power Civil or Military left in themselves but subordinate to him or derived from him and consequently such as could not lawfully in any case or upon any provocation be used against him The People having by such an Election parted with all the Power they formerly had without any reservation and much less power of resumption And this was well understood by Valerian the next Successor but one to Julian the Apostate who being chosen by the Army to be their Emperor and they crying out to him to name another to be Consors imperii a Partner in the Empire or one to govern with him he gave them this notable Answer 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It was in your Power O my Soldiers said he to chuse me to reign over you but now you have chosen me that which you demand belongs not to you but to me and it becomes you as Subjects to be quiet or not to meddle with matters of Government and to me as your King and Emperor to consider what is fit to be done Again I answer that even in Elective Kingdoms he that is chosen by the People to be their King hath not his Kingly Power from them that chose him but from God which is in express terms not only granted but asserted by Mr. Baxter and he values himself upon it as being upon that account a better friend to Kings than as he saith some Episcopall men are and indeed if he were always and in all he saith consistent with himself he would not be so great an Enemy to Kings as in this and many other of his Aphorisms which I have collected out of his Book of a Holy Commonwealth he hath shewed himself to be For if it be not the People who chuse him to be their King that give him his Kingly Power but that he hath it
had the supreme Power in a higher or so high a degree as he had and therefore he was emphatically called a Dictator because ejus dictum erat pro lege his word was a Law as well to the Senate as to the People and as well to the People as to the Senate and this Government though by the first institution it was but to continue six months at a time yet when Julius Caesar got it he made it perpetual and so became the first of the last sort of Governours in the Roman State who from him were called Caesares and might have been called Dictatores also as well as Caesares and Imperatores for they had always the same Power which the Dictators before Julius Caesar had but for a time only of the last of whom before himself who was Sylla Caesar scoffingly was wont to say Scylla nescivit dictare that Sylla did not-know how to dictate or act the Dictator because he had laid down the Dictatorship when he might have kept it and consequently of a Sovereign became a Subject But as the Government by Dictators in Rome before Caesar was but temporary and extraordinary so was that of the Decemviri and the Triumviri also and therefore to speak properly there were but three Changes of the ordinary and standing Government in the Roman State of which the first was Monarchical under the Kings into an Aristocratical under the Consuls and Senate the second from Aristocratical into Democratical under the People and their Tribunes and the third into Monarchical again under their Emperors And as when the Government was Aristocratical the whole Sovereignty was in the Senate and as likewise when the Government was Democratical the whole Sovereignty was in the People so likewise when the Government was Monarchical as it was first under their Kings and at last under their Emperors the whole Sovereignty was in those Kings and Emperors For though there was a Senate when there were Emperors as well as when there were Kings yet those Senators were not Partners in the Sovereignty with either of them but Subjects to them both though Mr. Baxter will needs have the Senate as well as the Emperor of Rome to be understood by St. Paul when he saith Let every soul be Subject to the higher Powers as if the Senate then were not any of those that were to be subject to the Emperor but of those that were to be obeyed as well as the Emperor as being Co-partners with him in the Sovereignty But perhaps Mr. Baxter had never heard of the Lex Regia the Royal Law whereby the whole Power of the Senate and People of Rome was transferred unto their Emperors and so his ignorance of that particular might lead him into that error though I believe he had something of design in it also as namely from the supposition of such Co-partnership of Sovereignty in the Roman Senate with the Emperor of Rome to infer the like Co-partnership of Sovereignty in the Parliament of England with our King though very illogically as shall be shewed hereafter CHAP. VIII The Low-Country War against the King of Spain justified by Grotius upon another account in that the whole Sovereignty he saith was in the States and King Philip had usurped it Sovereignty is wholly wherever it is like the Soul in the Body IN the mean time I cannot chuse but think that Grotius had some design of his own to serve when he supposeth there may be such a division of the Sovereignty betwixt such a Prince and such a People as he here speaks of namely when a free People in chusing one to be their King enjoyn him by a standing and perpetual Law to be content with such a part or parcel of the Sovereignty reserving to themselves the rest which if he invades they may not only resist him by force but if they can depose him also which if Grotius can prove to have been the Case of the Vnited Provinces when they took up Arms against the King of Spain he thinks thereby to justifie the War which his Countrymen have for so many years together made and maintained against the aforesaid King or at least to excuse himself and them not having been Rebels against the King of Spain because neither he was nor any of his Predecessors had been their Sovereign at least not their sole Sovereign nor indeed if what he says in his Book de Antiquitate Reipublicae Batavicae be true not their Sovereign at all but their Subject rather For the House of Spain saith he could have no more nor no other Right to the Sovereignty of the Vnited Provinces and the rest of the Netherlands or Low-Countries than they derived from the House of Burgundy nor the House of Burgundy any more than what came to them by marrying with the Heirs of the several Princes of those respective Provinces who could derive to their Husbands no more than was derived to them from their Parents and that as Grotius tells us in the aforesaid Book of his which he Dedicates Illustrissimis Hollandiae West-Frisiaeque Ordinibus to the States of Holland and West-Friezland was not the Sovereignty or supreme Power of any of those States and Provinces wherein they and their Husbands in their Right succeeded because none of their Fathers nor Fore-Fathers from the very beginning of Government in those Countries particularly of Holland and West-Friezland which he reckons to have been more than a thousand and seven hundred years before his writing of that Book had ever any of them the Sovereignty or supreme Power For although some of them were at first called Reges saith he that is Kings and some of them Duces or Dukes yet had they no more Power than those who were afterwards called Gravii or Comites Graves or Counts and that was none of the Sovereignty or supreme Power which was always penes Ordines in the States just so as now it is saith Grotius that is as it was at the very time when he writ that Book which was in the time of Grave Maurice or when Maurice Prince of Orange was Grave of Holland and West-Friezland and Zealand under the States of those Provinces quarum summa Potestas of which the Sovereignty or supreme Power as it was then so saith Grotius it had been always before in the States until the House of Burgundy did first secretly begin to undermine and Philip the II. of Spain did afterwards openly and violently and injuriously invade and usurp the Sovereignty it self of those Countries being Heir to them indeed but not as Sovereign but as Grave or Count only the Sovereignty being still in the States as it always had been And upon this Usurpation of the Sovereignty by Philip of Spain saith Grotius it was that Holland and the rest of the Vnited Provinces took Arms and at length cùm Philippum nec preces nec monita ad saniorem mentem revocare poterant when neither their intreaties
the Truth of it or as to the Inference he makes from it we will therefore examine First whether the Hypothesis namely that the Legislative Power is divided betwixt the King and the Parliament be true or no. And 2dly supposing not granting it to be so whether he doth rightly infer from thence that therefore the War made by the Parliament against the King was a just War and no Rebellion First then as to the Hypothesis it self so far as it supposeth the Legislative Power to be a part and principal part of the Soveraignty I grant it to be true but as it supposeth the Legislative power to be partly in the King and partly in the Parliament so as that the Laws are made by the Parliament as well as by the King I affirm it to be false For proving of which Assertion of mine and consequently for disproving the contrary Assertion of Mr. Baxters We are first to agree what is meant by the word Parliament 2dly How that which is meant by the word Parliament comes to be a Parliament or whence it hath its being what it is and its meeting when it does meet and its continuance after they are met 3dly What they do or legally can do in order to Law-making whilst they sit First then as to what is meant by the word Parliament in this Hypothesis it cannot be the King Lords and Commons because the Legislative power which is supposed to be divided betwixt the King and the Parliament cannot be supposed to be divided betwixt the King and the King as it must be if it be divided betwixt the King and the Parliament as the Parliament signifies the King Lords and Commons and therefore by the word Parliament here must needs be meant the Lords and Commons only or the two Houses as they make up that Body whereof the King is the Head And in this sence the word Parliament is always taken when the King and Parliament are spoken of together as distinct from one another as when the King is said to call or prorogue or dissolve the Parliament or the Parliament to make Addresses or to grant Subsidies to the King And in this sence I think Mr. Baxter would be thought to understand the word Parliament when he saith the Legislative power is divided betwixt the King and Parliament that is betwixt the King and the two Houses of Parliament Though there be many passages in this Book of his Holy Common-Wealth where speaking of the Parliament he must needs mean the House of Commons exclusively to the House of Lords as when he tells us the Parliament is to be believed by the People because they are the Peoples Representatives and Trustees where by Parliament must needs be meant the House of Commons only they and not the House of Lords being the Representatives and the Trustees of the Commons And so again when he saith the King is obliged to pass such Laws quas Vulgus elegerit which the People or Commonalty shall make choice of he must needs mean that the King must needs pass such Laws as the House of Commons will have him to pass so that the whole Legislative power is to be in the House of Commons alone exclusively to the Lords as well as to the King and to the King as well as to the Lords the King being only to declare that to be Law which the House of Commons without the concurrence of the Lords had voted to be so and this we saw and felt it come to at last and that it may not come to it again for it seems to be furiously driving that way it concerns the Lords as well as the King to consider But I will not in this debate take advantage of this notion of a Parliament I mean as it is often taken by Mr. Baxter for the House of Commons only but I will consider it as it is taken for both Houses and that not only severally but as in conjunction with one another And as thus considered the next Inquiry is how they come to be so or whence they have their Parliamentary existence and continuance I mean their being and continuing to be two Houses of Parliament and consequently whence they have the power of doing what they do or legally can do whilst they are two Houses If the Lords Temporal say they are of the Lords House by their Birth-rights because they are Lords and the Lords Spiritual say they are of the House of Lords because they are Representatives of the Clergy or because they are Bishops I answer it is true indeed they are so or have a right to be so when there is a House of Lords because they are constituting parts or members of it but neither of them can be actually and existingly of the House of Lords before there is a House of Lords and there is not nor cannot be actually a House of Lords or any existence of such an House until the King summons both the Lords Temporal and the Lords Spiritual to come and meet together at such a time in such a place and when upon such a summons or by virtue of the King's command they do come and meet together at such a time in such a place appointed and then and not till then they are a House of Lords The like may be said as to the House of Commons For if the Knights and Burgesses shall say when they are met that they are the House of Commons because they are chosen by the People to be their Representatives 't is true they are so but who gave the People leave or power to choose them to be their Representatives or to be that Body which we call the House of Commons Was it not the King could the People have done it without the King's Authority inabling them to do it or could they refuse to do it when he commanded them to do it If not then though the choice of those that are to be of the House of Commons be from the People yet the Peoples power to choose them being from the King it is that which makes them after they are chosen to be the House of Commons when they meet together which must be when and where the King pleaseth So that after they be chosen by the People to be the House of Commons or to be the representative body of the People yet are they not the House of Commons nor the representative body of the People till they meet at the time and in the place by the King appointed at least so many of them as are agreed on to be sufficient to make them act as a House or in their representative capacity The like in proportion may be said of the House of Lords also So that both Houses of Parliament as such have no existence or being at all until the King gives it them by calling them together nor continuance in being any longer than he pleaseth to continue them For
themselves as Mr. Baxter calls it as either they are more venerable for Antiquity or considerable for Plurality the King and none but the King must be acknowledged to be the Enacter or the maker of them And truly one would think that those Laws that are most ancient and consequently nearest in time to the first Institution of Parliaments though they were not the most in number were most to be credited for speaking most properly of who they were that made them then and consequently who it is that makes them now Unless Mr. Baxter will say it was the King and King alone indeed that made the Laws in Parliament then but it is the King Lords and Commons or the King and Parliament that makes them now and consequently that the King is not so much a King now as He was then and that the constitution of the Kingdom it self is changed from Monarchical to Aristocratical But then I must ask him by whom and when this great change was made Was it by him that brought in this new stile of Be it enacted by the King Lords and Commons c. That was Hen. the VIII who was not a Man likely to give away any of his Authority or to part with any part of his Soveraignty to his own Subjects who rescued it from the Popes incroachments And yet perhaps even He meaning to make use of the Parliament for the countenancing whatever he had a mind to do though never so extravagant in it self though never so offensive to Foreign Princes his Allies or never so injurious to his own Children because he thought it would be serviceable to his own ends after he had forced the two Houses to consent to what he listed to enact to joyn them with himself in the enacting of it as well as by assenting to it to make it so much the more plausible or at least so much the less grievous unto the People Otherwise it is most certain that never any King of England after the making of Magna Charta reigned so despotically and arbitrarily as he did or whom the two Houses of Parliament stood so much in awe of as they did of Him as appears by his making them consent to the doing and undoing to the enacting and repealing of whatsoever he would have to be done or undone to be enacted or repealed And therefore it is not to be imagined that such a King as he was did mean by changing of the stile to lessen the Legislative Power it self which was in his Predecessors by admitting those whom he used as he did the two Houses of Parliament to a participation of any the least degree of Soveraignty And as he never meant to do so so they the two Houses of Parliament did not then or ever since for ought I ever heard understand that to be the meaning of the Alteration from Be it enacted by the King with the consent of the Lords and Commons to Be it enacted by the King Lords and Commons to signifie that either the Kings power as to the making of Laws was less or the Parliaments greater than it was before this alteration of stile For if it had been understood either by the King or Parliament to signifie any such thing as the King especially such a King as Hen. VIII was would never have suffered the alteration of the former to the latter So the two Houses who are jealous enough of their Power and Priviledges would never have suffered the alteration of the latter to the former again as it was altered by King Edward Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth King Henry's three immediate Successors and as it is altered by our present King in the Act of Vniformity For as the alteration of the former to the latter could not have been made without the Kings so the alteration of the latter to the former could not have been made without the consent of the two Houses neither And therefore I verily believe that if any thing at all was meant by the alteration of the former stile to the latter it was only ad faciendum Populum to gain the People that the People might more willingly receive and submit to the Laws when they were made especially such of them as might seem to pinch them in their Purses when they were said to be enacted by the Lords and Commons or by the Lords and their Representatives and consequently by themselves as well as by the King for Volentibus non fit injuria where there is consent there is no injury And yet again lest by this alteration of stile and misinterpretation of it the Kings Prerogative of being the sole Soveraign and consequently the sole Law giver might be thought to be diminished by being communicated to either or both Houses of Parliament therefore the first most ancient and withal the longest continued stile of Be it enacted by our Soveraign Lord the King by the advice and with the consent of the Lords and Commons in Parliament assembled was presently after the first alteration of it resumed by the three next succeeding Princes as it hath been also now of late by our present Soveraign and by all of them with the consent of the Lords and Commons thereunto CHAP. VII The Laws enacted by the Authority of Parliament in what sense Why called Acts of Parliament They provide the Matter of the Laws the King gives the Form BUT withal will Mr. Baxter perhaps say with this Addition and by the Authority of the same that is by the Authority of the Parliament so that according to this former stile our Laws are said to be made and enacted by the Authority of the Parliament and consequently by the Authority of the two Houses of Lords and Commons as well as by the Kings For answer whereunto I might say in the first place that it was not till after 200. Years from the first Parliament that we read of in our Book of Statutes namely not until the Raign of Henry the VI. who owed his Title such as it was to the Parliament and to the Parliament as it signifies the two Houses only without the King for by the Authority of such a Parliament it was that is of a Body without a Head that Henry Bullingbrook was made King Richard the Second's surrender being neither voluntary nor lawful if it had been voluntary as was acknowledged by the two Houses themselves when Richard Duke of York claimed the Crown as the right Heir to it thereby acknowledging likewise that although they had de facto yet they could not de jure exclude the right Heir Howsoever their Authority being the only Title which the then present King had and held the Crown by as having not the courage either of his Grandfather or his Father to claim it by Conquest and hold it by force as they did He was willing to acknowledge he held it by Authority of Parliament as the word Parliament is taken for the two
out of them that seem to be possessed with him which is above all things to be wished and prayed for or those that are so possest be kept from infecting others by teaching and printing with that intolerable licence as they do and have done for so many years together we are not to expect to be long without another Civil War and whether the effects of that will not be as bad or worse than the former no man can tell I am sure we are not always to expect miracles I mean such a miraculous deliverance as we have once had from so many several sorts of arbitrary and Tyrannical Governments as that War brought us to or rather as we our selves brought our selves to by that Rebellion and as such a rebellion as that was may and nothing but such a rebellion as that was can probably and humanely speaking bring us to again CHAP. IV. An Expedient proposed to secure the Government both in Church and State viz. some such Law as the Scotch Test. The Heir of the Crown 's being a Papist or a Presbyterian c. comes much to the same pass FOR the preventing whereof why should not we follow the example of the Scots in that which is good as well as we did follow their example in that which was evil We took such a Covenant as they did in order to the making and helping us to make such a War against our King and theirs as they did and for the alteration of the Government and Religion established by Law in both Kingdoms And why should not we make such a Law as they have now made for the preservation of their Government and Religion as it is now by Law established amongst them why should not we I say make such a Law for the maintenance and preservation of the Government and Religion established by Law amongst Vs also I mean such a Law whereby all Men are disabled and made uncapable of any Office or Place of Power and Trust either Military or Civil or Ecclesiastical as likewise of being chosen themselves or of choosing others to be Members of Parliament as will not take such a Test and Oath as they have taken in Scotland that is never to give their consent to the Alteration either of the Religion or of the Government either in Church or State as it is there by Law established Such a Law as this and no worldly means but such a Law as this will secure us and our Posterity from all that we fear or pretend to be afraid of especially from Arbitrary Government and Popery and from Presbytery too For the Heir of the Crown may be a Presbyterian or an Independent or an Antinomian or an Anabaptist or a Socinian and may be every whit as great a Zealot and as much a Bigot in any of those perswasions as any Papist can be in his and consequently be as zealous and industrious to promote bring in and set up his Religion for the Only or at least for the Predominant Religion of the State as any Papist can be to bring in Popery and consequently to suppress all of any other perswasion but his own and that perhaps with as bloody a persecution as ever any Papist did when he hath as much power to do it Of this One of the Sects hath given us proof more than enough already I mean the Presbyterians who for the setting up of their Dagon instead of the Ark of God and for the abolishing of Monarchy in the State as well as Episcopacy in the Church entred into that Antichristian League and Covenant with the Scots whereby both Nations were ingaged in a bloody War with and against one another of which the execrable effects as no Act of Oblivion can ever make to be forgotten so can they never be remembred without horror nor indeed should be remembred without detestation of the procatarctical or promoting causes of it of which the most principal and most energetical was that Presbyterian Solemn League and Covenant for the setting up that Idol of theirs the Presbyterian Government for which they were so peremptorily and pertinaciously zealous and ambitious that in all their Treaties with the late King one of the conditions of Peace always was the abolishing of Episcopacy and setting up Presbytery instead of it without consenting whereunto and without taking of the Covenant as the Scotch Presbyterians did refuse the late King so the English Presbyterians would if they might have had their will have refused the present King to reign over them as might be made appear by the Consultation had amongst the Grandees of that Party to that purpose till they found it would be in vain to stand upon such terms the Noble and never to be forgotten General the late Duke of Albemarle being resolved to bring in the King as a King without condition and therefore as well for that as for his whole most prudent as well as loyal and couragious Conduct in that great affair I think that which was said of Fabius Maximus may be as properly and truly verified of him Vnus homo nobis cunct ando restituit rem That is One Man by his wary conduct hath restored our State and welfare And I wish it were engraven in Golden Letters upon his Tomb ad sempiternam rei memoriam for an everlasting Memorial But to return unto what I was speaking of what I have said already is enough to prove that a Presbyterian Heir of the Crown would do what he could to bring in and set up the Presbyterian Government which can no more consist with Monarchy in the State than it can with Episcopacy in the Church and make us all Presbyterians as well as a Poâ—ish Heir would to bring in Popery and to make us all Papists And that they would not suffer any that would not conform to them and comply with them is evident not only by what they did against us that were as they call'd us Cavaliers and Malignants but against their own Brethren in Iniquity the Independents and all the rest of the Sectaries their Fellow-Rebels against the King and Companions in Arms against Us all of whom they would have suppressed as well as they did Us if it had been in their power to do so as appears by their Books Sermons and Addresses to that which they call'd a Parliament against them And what the Presbyterians did against us and would have done against the Independents by the Parliament the Independents did against them by the Army And so no doubt would any other of the Schismatical Parties have done against all the rest that were not of their perswasion if they had got the power into their hands But none of them may some of their Friends say would have been so cruel as the Papists who hold it not only lawful but meritorious to put Hereticks that is all that are not Papists to death Did not the Presbyterians and Independents and the
have the King and the two Houses of Parliament to be Co-ordinates and that any of the two is to over-rule the third and consequently the two Houses of Parliament to over-rule the King if They agree and He will not this was HERL's way one of the Prolocutors of the Westminster Assembly called together by the two Houses in the Rebellious Parliament But Master BAXTER will have the Soveraignty divided betwixt the King and the two Houses or betwixt the King and the Parliament and will have it to be lawful for either of the Parties to defend its own Right by force if it be incroached upon by the other and that the People are to take part with the Party encroached upon against the Party encroaching but with this difference that They are always to believe what the Parliament declares against the King to be true because they are their Trustees not only to defend their Rights but to inform their Judgments whether they be wronged or no and because they are their Trustees not only as they are Subjects now but as they were originally or at first Contractors before they were Subjects and did then by bargain reserve unto themselves certain Priviledges and Immunities to be exempted for ever from the Kings Jurisdiction which if their Trustees whom they are to believe declare to be violated they may lawfully take Arms against the King to maintain or recover those Rights of theirs and to defend that part of the Soveraignty which the Parliament have in the Government Now putting all these things together and supposing a corrupt Majority of Parliament-men in both Houses as Mr. Baxter confesseth there may be and we know there hath been and therefore may be so again who can secure the King though he reign never so much according to Law from being always in danger of a Rebellion or the Kingdom from being always in danger of a Civil War which being the worst of Evils that can happen to any Body Politick they that sit at the helm ought above all things else to take especial care to prevent the broaching any such Principles as tend to the stirring up of the People to Sedition and Rebellion by making them believe that in some cases it is not only lawful but their duty to take up Arms against the King and that they shall do God and the King too good service in so doing Such are those Principles of Mr. Baxter before rehearsed published and owned by him in many of his Books especially in that of the Holy Common-Wealth and amongst the rest especially two of which he seems to be the Original Parent or very first Author as namely first That the Peoâ—le of England are represented by their Trustees in Parliament not only as Subjects to the King but as Contractors with the King before he was their King and before they were his Subjects for which he brings no other proof but that he takes it for undeniable And 2dly That the Soveraignty here with us is not in the King alone as the Oath of Supremacy saith it is but that it is divided betwixt the King and the two Houses of Parliament and for proof of this the only reason he gives is That the Legislative Power which is essential to Soveraignty is in them as well as in the King and the late King himself confessed it to be so Whether it be so or no I have already considered and examined at large and I hope have proved that the King and the King alone is the efficient cause or maker of our Laws whatsoever the two Houses may antecedently do towards the making of them CHAP. XIII The late King 's owning that the Laws are made jointly by King Lords and Commons how to be understood NEither do I think what Mr. Baxter saith the late King confesseth in his answer from York to the Parliaments XIX Propositions namely That in this Kingdom the Laws are joyntly made by a King by an House of Peers and by an House of Commons chosen by the People doth being rightly understood contradict what I have said of the making of our Laws by the King only For although to say the same thing is made solely by one and joyntly by more than one seems to be a contradiction yet if by making the same thing be meant the making of it not in the same but several sences it is no contradiction to say it is made by one and no more in one sence and yet that it is made jointly by more in another sence For example according to an instance before given It may truly be said that Christ alone shall judge the World and yet it may truly be said that the XII Apostles for so saith Christ himself and all the rest of the Saints for so saith St. Paul shall judge the World together with him because the judging of the World by Christ is meant in one sense and the judging of the World by the Saints in another For it is Christ and Christ alone or Christ and none but Christ shall judge the World as a Judge properly so called that is authoritativè or by his own inherent power and Authority But the Saints are said to judge the World approbativè by assenting to and approving of the judgment given by Christ as just and righteous so that in propriety of speech they are not to be called Judges but Assessors and Assenters only In like manner as to the making of our Laws it may be truly said that the King alone is the maker of them because it is by the King and by the King alone that they are made to be Laws which were before no Laws and yet it may truly though not so properly be said too that they are made by the King and the two Houses of Parliament because they do consent to the Kings making of them to be Laws and not only so but also because they do not only consent to the making and publishing of them after they are made Laws by the King but they must consent to have them made Laws by the King before the King can make them to be Laws And yet for all that it is the King and the King alone who by his LE ROT LE VEVLT or his FIAT doth make them to be Laws In which operative and efficacious words neither of the Houses concur with him and yet it is by those words only or alone that what was before but a Bill that is an Embryo or at most but materia disposita matter fit to be made a Law of is informed and enlivened with that obliging power and authority both directive and coactive which makes it to be a Law So that all the two Houses can be said to do towards the making of a Law is to give it a posse fieri a capacity to be made a Law but it is the King and the King only that gives it its factum esse its being made so and yet because the
Bilson as also his helping effectually together with the Bishop of Ely to bring Mr. B. and his party under and lastly his causing Mr. Jones to be put out of the Duke's Service CHAP. I. The Reason why the Bishop advised Mr. B. to reade Hooker and Bilson and Mr. B 's fraud in giving the account laid open THe rest of those things he chargeth me withall being of much less importance I shall consider with much more brevity both for the Reader 's sake and my own And I will begin with that which indeed would be of no importance at all and consequently not worth the taking notice of but that there is something of art and fraud concealed in it which ought to be detected to manifest Mr. Baxter's constant disingenuous and insincere dealing with those he writes against either by making them say what they did not and then concluding what he lists from it or by hudling things together that were said upon several occasions and to several ends and purposes as if they had been said upon one and the same occasion and to one and the same end and purpose Of the former of those jugling Arts of his I have given divers Instances already I shall now give one of the latter also For whereas he saith I advised him to reade BILSON and HOOKER it is very true I did so but whereas he adds that he found in them more than he approved for resisting and restraining Kings he would have it to be understood that I advised him to reade both those Authours upon one and the same Subject namely concerning the resisting and restraining of Kings which he knows to be false For I did not advise him to reade either the one or the other of those Authours or any Authour else upon that Argument there being nothing at that time either in Debate or Discourse betwixt him and me but of the Service and Ceremonies of our Church and of the Government of the visible Catholick Church in all Ages and in all places And as touching the former I advised him to reade Hooker's Ecclesiastical Policy so touching the latter Bishop Bilson but what Book of Bishop Bilson's Not that of Christian Subjection as he would make his Readers to believe it was but his Book of the perpetual Government of Christ's Church in defence of Episcopacy So that in saying I advised him to reade Hooker and Bilson and adding that he found more in them than he approved for resisting and restraining of Kings it is evident that he did fallaciously intend to make his Readers believe First That I advised him to reade both those Authours for his better information in one and the same thing whereas that for which I advised him to reade Mr. Hooker was the justification of the Rites and Ceremonies and outward form of worship in our Church and that for which I advised him to reade Bishop Bilson was to convince him that the Church of Christ had been always governed as ours is by Bishops Secondly By what he saith he would have it be lieved also that the thing for which I advised him to reade the aforesaid Authours was to inform him what he was to believe concerning the lawfulness or unlawfulness of Princes being resisted by their Subjects whereas in that Book of Bishop Bilson's which I advised him to reade there is nothing at all of that Argument nor in Mr. Hooker neither Thirdly He would make his Readers to believe also that I approve of what both or either of those Two Authours hold to the prejudice of Princes but he himself doth not and consequently that he is a better friend to Princes than either they or I am For if I advised him to reade Hooker and Bilson as he affirms and I confess I did and to reade them as Authours whose opinion touching the resisting of Kings by their Subjects I approved of as he insinuates but He did not he must needs imply not onely that Hooker and Bilson were but that I am more for the lawfulness of Kings being resisted and restrained by their Subjects than he is Whereas if he had intended to have dealt fairly and ingenuously either with me or his Readers he should have told them not onely that I advised him to reade Hooker and Bilson but what Books of theirs I advised him to reade and to what end and purpose I advised him to reade them which was as I said before to reade Mr. Hooker for the justifying of the Service and Ceremonies of our Church and Bishop Bilson for the justifying of the Government of our Church by Bishops and neither of them to that end and purpose which he would have his Readers believe I did viz. touching the lawfulness of the restraining and resisting of Kings by their Subjects for which he saith there was more in them than he could approve of and yet no more than I must needs be thought to approve because I recommended the reading of them to him and consequently that I as I said before was more for restraining and resisting of Kings by their Subjects than he was so that by concealing what Books of those Authours they were which I advised him to reade and upon what Subject and to what end I advised him to reade them and which is worse by substituting another Subject matter instead of that which I advised him to reade them for wholly foreign to it his fraudulent dealing with his Readers as well as with me is so apparent that it cannot be denied and so foul that it cannot be excused But supposing it had been true that I had advised him to reade both those Authours upon the same Argument and that Argument had been concerning the restraining and resisting of Kings yet I see no reason why he should say that he found more in them for the restraining and resisting of Kings than He did approve CHAP. II. Mr. Hooker saith more in favour of Kingly Power and of our King in particular than Mr. B. can approve FOr first as for Mr. Hooker supposing the three last Books of his Ecclesiastical Policy to be set forth without any alteration or Interpolation as he left them which many suspect they were not but supposing I say they were all of them set forth as he left them yet there is nothing to be found in any one of them or in any of his former Books for the lawfulness of resisting of Kings by their Subjects in any case or upon any provocation whatsoever but on the contrary in the Eighth or last of those three Books of his Ecclesiastical Policy wherein ex instituto On set purpose he treats of the Power of Kings in the managery both of Civil and Ecclesiastical Affairs though he supposeth most Kings to have been originally chosen by the People as a Man is chosen by a Woman to be her Husband yet as the Power of a Husband is not from the Woman that chuseth him but from God so the Kingly Power is
his Successours but not to exclude some that are at home namely the Parliament from having a part of it So that in respect I mean in respect of the extent of the King's Supremacy over all Persons in all capacities Mr. Baxter might find more in Mr. Hooker than he could approve of viz. the King's Supremacy over all Persons in his Kingdom and consequently his being the onely Supreme Governour being utterly inconsistent with the division of the Sovereignty betwixt the King and Parliament which is Mr. Baxter's fundamental Principle upon which he grounds his defence of the late Rebellion and lays a foundation of the like Rebellions from Generation to Generation for the future Again as Mr. Baxter might find more in Mr. Hooker than he could approve for the extent of the King's Supremacy in regard of the Persons over whom so might he likewise in regard of the Things whereunto it is extended concerning which in the general Mr. Hooker saith Our Kings when they are to take possession of the Crown have it pointed out before their Eyes even by the very solemnities and rites of their Inaugurations to what affairs their supreme Power and Authority reacheth crowned saith he we see they are inthroniz'd and anointed The Crown is a sign of their military Dominion the Throne of sedentary or judicial the Oil of religious or sacred power So that according to Mr. Hooker the jus gladii the Power of the Sword or the right of making War as likewise of making Laws both Civil and Ecclesiastical belongs to the King's Supremacy And to both those ends as he tells us afterwards it is one of our King's Prerogatives to call and dissolve all solemn Assemblies about our publick affairs either in Church or State so that there can be no such voluntary Associations of Churches as Mr. Baxter would have nor no such Associations of the People without the King's leave as others would have no nor no making of Laws neither either in Parliament for the State or in Convocation for the Church when they are called and met together but by the King and that not onely because no Law of any kind can be made without the Royal Assent by reason of the King 's Negative without which saith Mr. Hooker the King were King but in name onely but because it is the Royal Assent that makes it to be a Law For though as the same Mr. Hooker observes Wisedom is requisite for the devising and discussing of Laws he means the Wisedom of the Lords and Commons in Parliament for the devising and discussing of Laws for the State and the Wisedom of the Representatives of the Clergy in the Convocation for the devising and discussing of Laws for the Church yet it is not that Wisedom saith he that makes them to be Laws but that which establisheth them and maketh them to be Laws is Power even the Power of Dominion the chiefty whereof saith he amongst us resteth in the Person of the King Whereunto he adds Is there any Law of Christ's which forbiddeth Kings and Rulers of the Earth to have such sovereign and supreme Power in making of Laws either Civil or Ecclesiastical Which question being virtually a negative Proposition implies that there is no Law of God to prohibit any King to doe what our King doeth that is as he positively and clearly affirms to make Laws for his own Subjects by that supreme Power that resteth in his own Person and consequently is not divided betwixt him and the Parliament no not in the making of Laws which is the onely instance given by Mr. Baxter to prove the Sovereignty or supreme Power in this Kingdom not to be in the King alone or in the King onely which as I said before is the Foundation on which he superstructs the building of his Babel or the Justification of the late Confusion and Rebellion And therefore he had reason to say he found more in Hooker than he did approve because to approve all he found in Hooker touching the supreme Power either of all Kings in general or of our own Kings in particular had been to condemn himself who is much more for the restraining and resisting of Kings by their Subjects than Mr. Hooker who as I said before hath not a word of resisting nor of restraining them neither any otherwise than as they have restrained themselves by Laws of their own making So that Mr. Hooker may still retain that honourable title which learned Men have given him of judicious Hooker whatsoever voluminous Mr. Baxter hath said upon this or any other occasion to take it away from him CHAP. III. Bishop Bilson though in an errour yet saith not so much for the resisting of Kings as Mr. B. doth The Case stated of Subjects rebelling upon the account of Religion and of other Princes assisting them AS for Bishop BILSON whom Mr. Baxter saith I advised him to reade I confess I cannot say He hath nothing for the resisting of Kings by their Subjects in any of his Books but this I can say that he hath nothing to that purpose in that Book of his which I advised Mr. Baxter to reade no nor in any of his Books hath he so much for resisting of Kings as Mr. Baxter himself in his Book of the Holy Commonwealth And therefore I wonder he should say he found more in BILSON for the resisting and restraining of Kings than he could approve Bishop Bilson was one of my Predecessours in the Bishoprick of Winchester and much more before me in Learning than he was in Time but Bernardus non vidit omnia and the learnedst and best of Men are but Men and therefore may err and good men very good men may be the apter to fall into some kind of errours both speculatively and practically by indulging too much even to their good affections And therefore I believe it was his Zeal for the true Religion and his compassion to those that were persecuted for it that made this Learned and Good Man say so much as he doth which is more than I wish he had in excuse of taking up of Arms by the French Dutch and Scotch Protestants in defence of themselves and their Religion against their several respective Princes And I think we ought to believe that it was for the same reason and not for reason of State onely that Queen Elizabeth did at the same time assist with Men Money and Arms all the aforesaid Subjects against their aforesaid Sovereigns But yet for all that I do not think that either the Queen did well in doing what she did or that the Bishop did well in writing what he writ in defence of them because I do not think they themselves I mean the subjects of those Princes did well in making that resistance which they did contrary to the Precepts of the Gospel and to the Practice of the Primitive Christians And I remember that upon this consideration during
supposing I was mistaken in thinking him to be a Presbyterian I know not why he should take it as an affront to be thought to be so for being evidently and confessedly a Dissenter from the Government and publick way of Worship as it is established by Law in the Church of England I thought it was more for his Honour to be thought and treated with as a Presbyterian than as one of any other of the more novel and more ignoble Sects which though they all of them have Presbytery for their Mother yet they had not all of them Calvin for their Father but are the bastard issue of unknown Sires Besides I had reason to think that Mr. Baxter was of the same persuasion that his Commilitones his Fellow-Souldiers in the Dispute at the Savoy were who were always taken for Presbyterians and did not take it for a Reproach but rather for an Honour to be thought to be so And if it be honourable to be of such or such a party it is much more honourable to be the Antesignanus or leader of such a party And therefore thinking as I did for the reasons aforesaid Mr. Baxter to be a Presbyterian and hearing he had been a Souldier in the late War and having observed how he had behaved himself as a Leader in the aforesaid Dispute at the Savoy I thought I could not call him a more proper name in relation to both his Professions I mean that of a Warriour and that of a Disputer than that of Antesignanus a Standard-bearer But perhaps I may be mistaken all this while in thinking Mr. Baxter takes it ill to be called either Antesignanus or Antesignanus Presbyterianorum Whereas it is his being called Antesignanus of the Presbyterians onely and not of the other Sects as well as of that which offends it being a diminution of his just Title to be the Antesignanus but of one Sect onely whereas he undertakes the defence of all the Nonconformists so far forth at least as they refuse to conform to the Church of England how much soever they may differ among themselves as appears by the Title page of one of his last Books published last Year but written as he saith many Years before and called An Apology for the Nonconformists Ministry containing their Reasons for their Preaching and an Answer to the Accusations urged as Reasons for the silencing about 2000 by Bishop Morley Dr. Saywell Mr. Durell c. From which Title of that Book of his it is manifest that he owns himself an Apologist for all the Nonconformists at least for all their Preachers and especially for all those that were silenced which were all that had been Preachers before of what Sect or denomination soever which would not subscribe and submit to the Act of Vniformity after the King's Restauration And those were Anabaptists Antinomians Quakers Fifth monarchy men as well as Presbyterians and Independents for all these were Nonconformists and every of these Sects had their Preachers who were all of them equally silenced by the Act of Vniformity and therefore must be reckoned amongst those for whom Mr. Baxter professeth himself to be an Apologist and indeed if they be not I think he will hardly make up one of his 2000 silenced Preachers If he say that in the aforesaid Title to that Book of his it is the Nonconformists Ministry or the Ministers of the Nonconformists that he pleads for I demand whether by the Ministry he means onely such as have an outward Call by publick Authority to the Work of the Ministry or to the teaching of others whether that calling be by the Episcopal or Presbyterian way of Ordination If so then not onely all those gifted men that pretend to no other but an inward calling are excluded from being any of his 2000 whom he pleads for but the Congregational or Independent Preachers also who have no outward calling but from their own Congregations onely and so perhaps have the Gifted men whether Anabaptists or Quakers or any other of the Fanatical holders-forth from those that are their own Auditours also so that Mr. Baxter must either leave out those I mean the Independents or take in these I mean all the rest of the Sectaries into the number of those he calls the Nonconformist Ministry and for whom he professeth he maketh the aforesaid Apology and whom he would have restored to the same liberty or licence of preaching which they had formerly in the time of the Rebellion and Usurpation A very sober and seasonable Proposal to be made to Bishops and those Bishops whom he makes it to are very much beholding to him for the good opinion he hath of them as the onely men of their Order that are likely to hearken to such a proposal In the mean time we may learn from hence whom he means by the word Vs when he tells the Bishop of Ely and Me that We two of all he knows have most effectually helped to bring Vs that is all the Nonconformists of all kinds under CHAP. V. How Mr. B. and his party have been brought under and how they brought in the King WE are therefore now in the second place to guess as well as we can at what he means by bringing him and the rest of the Nonconformists Vnder There is none of them I believe but would be uppermost if they could for Pride is inseparable from Schism and it is the downfall of Pride to be brought under The Two chief Sects of the Nonconformists the Presbyterians and Independents have had their turns in being uppermost the Presbyterians whilst the Parliament and the Independents whilst the Army and Cromwell had the power of which two Sects it may be said as it was of Caesar and Pompey the one to wit the Independents like Caesar could not ferre priorem could endure none to be above them and the other to wit the Presbyterians like Pompey could not ferre parem must needs have all to be under them and therefore each of them having been uppermost before they must needs be very angry with all those who have helped to bring them both under after they had domineered so long as they had done And of those that have helped to bring them under Mr. Baxter tells the Bishop of Ely and Me that We two of all men he knows have been the chief But under whom or under what is it that We have helped to bring them Sure it must be under some Person or some Thing that they would not willingly have been brought under otherwise they would not have been angry with us or complained of us for so doing Vnder whom is it therefore that We have helped to bring them Is it not He under whom they ought always to have been under namely the KING their natural Liege-Lord and Sovereign But they had brought his Father under them and therefore were the more unwilling to be brought under his Son for fear he might remember
AND now I am come at last to the consideration of the last of those injurious Reflexions which in the beginning of this Book I observed to have been made upon me by Mr. Baxter and for the confutation of which I principally intended all that I have written though many other things which I thought not of at first occasionally falling in have made that which I meant should be but a small Tract to swell into a large Volume but now I am in and have gone so far I must go through with it The Reflexion therefore which I am now to speak of is in Mr. Baxter's Answer to Dr. Stillingfleet's Sermon towards the end of it the words are these I must say that when some Prelates made it their great business to silence shame and ruine us and drive us far enough from persons of power undertaking to preserve the Protestant Religion better without us than with us and after all cry out themselves that we are in danger of Popery by their own Pupils and Disciples whose instruction they undertook men will have leave to think of this awake and to judge of Causes by Effects These I say are the words of that Reflexion which I complain of as intentionally aimed at me though obliquely and by circumlocution onely especially in the latter part of it For as for the former part of that saying of his where he speaks of some Prelates that made it their great business to silence shame and ruine them that is him and the rest of the Dissenters though I doubt not but he means me for one of those Prelates and one of the chief of them because he tells me and the Bishop of Ely in plain terms that we two of all he knows have effectually helped to bring them under yet I do not take my self to be peculiarly concern'd in this whether it be truly or falsly averr'd by him and therefore though I could tell him and tell him truly and prove it too that I never made it any of my business to shame or ruine him or any of the Dissenters or to silence any more of them than by Law I was not onely allowed but obliged to silence though I could say this I say and more too to prove that I never did any the least injury to any of them but have shewed kindness to some that had dealt hardly with me namely to Mr. Langley of Pembroke College who having gotten into my Canonry of Christ's Church in Oxford never allowed me one penny out of it during above 12 years I was abroad nor after I came home made me any recompence yet thinking I was one would doe good for evil he had the confidence to write to me and to intreat me to befriend him for the renewing of a Lease he held of Magdalen College as being their Visitor I did it for him Though I say I could make proof of this yet I will not insist upon it that which I except against is a false and injurious reflexion upon me particularly being contained in the words that follow viz. driving us that is him and those of his Party far enough from Persons of power undertaking to preserve the Protestant Religion better without us than with us and after cry out themselves that we are in danger of Popery by their own Pupils and Disciples whose instruction they undertook themselves and then concludes men will have leave to think of this awake and to judge of causes by effects This I say is the Reflexion I complain of as false and injurious and as being my self more particularly aimed at in it than any other of the Prelates he before spake of For though here as well as there he makes use of the plural number as if he meant what he saith of more than one yet that which he saith of them he knew would be understood by those by whom he would have it to be understood to be meant of me or if not of me onely yet of me principally and especially because he and others perhaps of his Party had heard from Mr. JONES and others from them that I had caused the said Mr. Jones to be put out of the Duke of York's service having been before a Chaplain to his Royal Highnesses Family to his Family I say for he was never any of the four that were properly and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by way of eminence called the Duke's Chaplains but onely one of the two who were daily to efficiate in the Duke's Chapel to the Houshold whether He or the Dutchess were there or no so that Mr. Jones was not so great a man either in place of attendance or in grace and favour with either of their Highnesses that either his stay could hinder or his remove could further any design that I or any man else might have had upon the Duke or Dutchess in order to the seducing or perverting both or either of them in matter of Religion And yet this Mr. Jones was the man and I verily believe the onely man Mr. Baxter thought of though he speaks in the plural number here also as if we the Prelates had driven them that is all or many of them far enough from persons of Power Now I would fain know of Mr. Baxter what one man of their Party was ever driven away by any of the Prelates from any person of Power or was ever said to be so but this Mr. Jones onely who was never thought to be one of their Party whilst he was in the Duke's service I am sure he profess'd the contrary and if he had not I am sure he could not have been admitted into the Duke's service as no man else could either into the Duke's or into any other persons of power the Law not made by the Prelates but by the King in Parliament I mean the Act of Vniformity having made all of that Party as long as they were of that Party uncapable of being Chaplains or Schoolmasters in Noblemens or in any great mens Houses and therefore there was no need of the Prelates driving them farther from persons of power than the Law had driven them already Neither was it for his being one of them though perhaps he was one of them in his heart that Mr. Jones was put out of the Duke's service but for behaving himself otherwise than he ought to have done in it but how that was I forbear to say because he is dead onely I must say that I was neither Judge nor Witness nor Plaintiff nor Defendant nor any way a party in the case no nor knew not any thing of the matter it self or of the cause of it untill after it was done as Dr. Killigrew then Clerk of the Closet to the Duke and Dr. Turner then and now one of the Duke's Chaplains will I doubt not be ready to testify if it were tanti worth the while to call them to it But first that it was this Mr. Jones
last yet that which both of them agree in to be done first is the pulling down of us in order to the setting up of themselves afterwards And hence it is that the Papists who are much the cunninger Gamesters do make the Sectaries to play their Game for them by making as many divisions as they can amongst us to the end that dum singuli pugnant universi vincantur while we fight in single parties we may all the whole body of us be beaten and worsted And I pray God it prove not to be so at last In the mean time the aid and assistance which Mr. Baxter thinks we of the Church of England have from the Nonconformists for the inabling us to defend our selves against the common Enemy the Papists puts me in mind of what the ingenious Boccalini saith of Spain that when it was weighed by it self the weight that is the power wealth and strength thereof was very considerable but when they put the Kingdom of Naples first and then the Dutchy of Millain into the Scale thinking thereby to add much to the weightiness of the Spanish Monarchy they found it to be much lighter and the less considerable both in strength power and wealth than it was before And so no doubt the Church of England of it self alone would be more healthfull more strong more vigorous and every way more able than it is to preserve the Protestant Religion and to defend it self against Popery and all other heretical opposition or invasion from without if there were neither Presbyterians nor Independents nor Baxterians or any other Dissenters from it lurking in it who whilst they seem to be zealous to keep out Popery do effectually though not intentionally make way for the bringing of it in And therefore as a great Statesman in Queen Elizabeth's time was wont to say That England would be the best Island in the World if Scotland and Ireland were drown'd in the bottom of the Sea speaking I suppose of Scotland and Ireland as they then were the one at enmity with us and the other in rebellion against us and therefore that it would be better for us that they were not at all than to be so near in place to us and so far off in affection from us so may I say of the Church of England That as it is the best so it would be the happiest of all Churches in the Christian world if there were not so many tam propè tam procúlque nobis That are so near to us and so far off from us I mean so many among us that are not of us who have been and are and will be always thorns in our Eyes and goads in our Sides unless they be either wholly as the Irish Rebels were suppressed by us or of Enemies become our Friends as the Scotch are by being united to us and that not onely as the Scots are by becoming Subjects to the same King but Subject to the same Laws also The End of the Sixth Section THE CONCLUSION Wherein two possible Objections against the whole Design of this Writing are Answered Mr. Baxter 's Recantation examined his professions of Loyalty censured and his Way of Concord disapproved AND now having sufficiently and as I hope satisfactorily to all indifferent and impartial Readers justified what I have truly said of Mr. BAXTER in that Letter of mine with the Appendices thereunto so long ago Printed and vindicated my self from all those false and injurious reflections which in diverse passages of several of his Books he hath either plainly and directly or obscurely and obliquely made on me which was all I intended to do I should here make an end of giving my self or the World any more trouble did I not foresee that there might one or two Objections more de novo anew be made against me which I think I ought to prevent The former of which is That supposing I have sufficiently proved that Mr. Baxter did at the Conference at the Savoy assert and maintain what I in my long ago Printed and now reprinted Letter do affirm he did assert and maintain concerning things sinful by Accident yet seeing that since then he hath in a Treatise purposely written upon that subject declared himself to be otherwise minded than I say he was at that Conference I ought in Charity to have forborn upbraiding him with what he said then Whereunto I answer that the difference betwixt me and Mr. Baxter as to that particular being whether I had falsly charged him or no with what he had said at the aforesaid Conference as he in an Address to his Parishioners at Kidderminster pretends I had I was necessitated in mine own defence to prove I had not charged him falsly but that howsoever his mind be changed since he did then assert and maintain what I in my Sermon at Kidderminster did affirm he had asserted and maintained at that Conference as it was presently after that Conference attested in Print by the subscriptions of the now Bishops of Ely and Chester who were two of the three Disputants on our part and are yet God be thanked alive to confirm and justifie the truth of their Attestation if need be which hath never yet though it was Printed above 20 years ago been excepted against either by Mr. Baxter himself or by any of his Party and consequently is as good as acknowledged and confessed to be true And if that Attestation of theirs be true all that I affirm to have been asserted by Mr. Baxter of things sinful by Accident at that Conference must needs be true also whatsoever he hath said and published in any of his Books since to the contrary Which I take for a sufficient answer to the former of the aforesaid objections if any such shall be made by Mr. Baxter or by any other in his behalf hereafter Now as to the latter of the aforesaid Objections which I foresee may be made against me also and which is of much more moment than the former namely that it was uncharitably done of me to publish such a Collection of Mr. Baxter's Aphorisms against all Monarchies in general and this Monarchy of ours in particular as I did at first with that Letter of mine above 20 years since and much more uncharitably done of me now not only to reprint and publish those Aphorisms again with some others of the same kind out of the same forge but to aggravate the hainousness and dangerousness of them in relation to Kingly Government as I have done in this Book of mine to make him more and more odious to those that are in Power at present as one that is not only not to be suffered to Preach or Write but to Live in a Monarchy and all this after he hath disclaimed and recanted what he writ before and what I except against in those Aphorisms of his My answer therefore hereunto is 1. That Mr. Baxter having been silenced by me when I was
become of Mr. Baxter in the mean time And yet surely Confession and Contrition ought to precede forgiveness both in foro Poli and in foro Soli too and as well with men as with God And truly it would have been more for Mr. Baxter's own credit and for the Kings and Churches satisfaction if it had been so I mean if he had publickly Recanted what he ought and as he ought to have Recanted both in point of judgment and practise a great deal sooner than he did as either before the Kings coming home which had been indeed the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the most proper and most acceptable time or at least assoon as he had the first opportunity for it after the Kings coming home And such an opportunity he had if he could have found in his heart to have made use of it I mean that time when the King was graciously pleased though he knew well enough what Mr. Baxter had written and done against his Father and himself to give him leave to Preach before him in the Chappel-Royal Then then I say was the time and there the place for him publickly and humbly and solemnly upon his Knees to have prefaced his Sermon or ensuing Discourse with a self-accusing self-condemning Exomologesis or Confession made in his own and in the name of his whole Party I mean the contrivers abettors and promoters of and actors in that most unchristian and inhumane Conspiracy and Rebellion against the late King and ended it with a quorum pars magna fui of which company I my self made a great part which would have become him much better speaking of sins inconsistent with a true faith then the Harangue he made against drunkenness and swearing and Atheism and profaneness and loosness of life without saying any thing at all against Hypocrisie or lying or standering or pride or malice or covetousness or sedition or rebellion as if those sins were not inconsistent with true faith as well or as much as the former But those he knew were thought to be the sins of those of the Kings and these of those of his own party as if our sins and not theirs and consequently we and not they the Kings and not the Parliaments Party had been the cause of that unnatural War and consequently of all those horrible mischiefs that were done in it together with all the dismal consequences and effects of it and so indeed in a late Book of his he is not afraid nor ashamed to tell us in plain terms But this Sermon of his was made it seems before he was convinced he had sinned in incouraging so many thousands as he saith he did to the War against the King so that the time of his Recantation was not yet come though I presume he stayed not so long before he sued out his Pardon Well but when the time was come when he thought fit to publish that Paper which he calls a Recantation which was eight or nine years after he had Preached the aforesaid Sermon before the King let us see what manner of Recantation it was or whether it was such a one as can make an impartial and judicious peruser of it believe without doubting that it is so sincere as an ingenuous and voluntary Recantation ought to be For besides the tardiness of its coming forth which I noted before and which argues some other motive besides conviction of conscience for the publishing of it it is farther observable First That the wording of it wants that clearness and plainness which an ingenuous Recantation ought to have and Secondly That it is so clog'd and restrained and limited and shackled as it were with such and so many exceptions and conditions and proviso's that such a muddy-brain'd man as I am cannot tell what to make of it And first as to the want of clearness in the wording of it when he speaks of all he pretends to Recant in that paper he doth not say I profess my repentance that ever I held it but that ever I published it he might have said as well and perhaps as truly I am sorry that Bishop Morley's collection of so many false and pernicious Aphorisms out of that Book hath made me profess my repentance for the publishing of them Howsoever it is not his professing his repentance for the publishing of them can prove he repents the holding of them or that he is not still of the same judgment because though he be so it is not safe for him to profess himself to be so every 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is not a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 there is a difference betwixt times and seasons that may be safe or seasonable to be said or done or written and published at one time that can be neither seasonable nor safe at another So that we cannot conclude Mr. Baxter to be of any other mind now than he was before from his saying that he is sorry no nor from his being sorry indeed that he had formerly declared his judgment as he did Again as the want of clearness and plainness in the wording of that pretended Recantation may make the sincerity so the clogging of it with so many proviso's may make the ingenuity thereof to be suspected as if it had been extorted and not voluntary For it looks as if he that makes it were afraid he had overshot himself and said too much or might be thought by those of his own Party to have said too much in that little he had said before and therefore he adds the subsequent proviso's which if what he had declared before was real and sincere are all of them needless and impertinent and worse than needless and impertinent if he means to limit and restrain what he said before by them as he seems to do especially by the first and last of them For as in the first of those Proviso's he tells us he doth not reverse all the matter of that Book which he told us before he did Recant and that not only for some by-passages in it but in respect of the very scope of it so in the last of those Proviso's he protests against the judgment of Posterity which all sincere and ingenuous Writers do usually appeal unto as likewise against the judgment of all others that were not of the same time and place he should have said of the same Party and Perswasion also as to the censuring either of that Book of his or the revocation of it as being ignorant of the true causes of them both and then concludes that these things provided viz. if he may be allowed to except as much of the matter of the Book he pretends to Recant from being reversed as he pleaseth and upon condition that neither the Book nor the Recantation of it be censured by any but by whom he pleaseth he did vouchsafe to publish that Paper which he would have taken for a Recantation to which aforesaid Proviso's I wonder he did not
according to the legal establishment thereof of so sound so healthful so orderly and so well compacted a constitution as it is and which by long experience we have found so agreeable to the established Government of the State that we cannot make any alteration in the one without great disordering of the other Let us not give ear to any of those Church and State Mountebanks or Empericks who if we let them alone a little longer will never leave mending till they have marr'd all Mr. BAXTER'S Recantation referred to page of the Conclusion Printed 1670. at the end of a Book of His called The Life of Faith after a Catalogue of Books Written and Published by the same Author LET the Reader know that whereas the Bookseller hath in the Catalogue of my Books named my Holy-Commonwealth or Political Aphorisms I do hereby recall the said Book and profess my Repentance that ever I published it and that not only for some by-passages but in respect of the secondary part of the very scope Though the first Part of it which is the defence of God and Reason I recant not But this Revocation I make with these Proviso's 1. That I reverse not all the Matter of that Book nor all that more than ONE have accused As e. g. the Assertion that all Humane Powers are limited by God And if I may not be pardoned for not defying DEITY and HUMANITY I shall prefer that ignominy before their present Fastus and Triumph who defie them 2. That I make not this Recantation to the Military fury and rebellious pride and tumult against which I wrote it nor would have them hence take any encouragement for impenitence 3. That though I dislike the Roman Clergies writing so much of Politicks and detest Ministers medling in State matters without necessity or a certain call yet I hold it not simply unbeseeming a Divine to expound the fifth Commandment nor to shew the dependance of humane Powers on the Divine nor to instruct Subjects to obey with judgment and for Conscience sake 4. That I protest against the judgment of Posterity and all others that were not of the same TIME and PLACE as to the mental censure either of the BOOK or the REVOCATION as being ignorant of the true reasons of them both Which things Provided I hereby under my hand as much as in me lyeth reverse the Book and desire the World to take it as non Scriptum April 15. 1670. R. B. ACT Anent Religion and the TEST August 31. 1681. Made in the Third PARLIAMENT of Our Most High and Dread Sovereign CHARLES the Second Holden at EDINBURGH the 28 day of July 1681. By his Royal Highness JAMES Duke of Albany and York c. His MAJESTIES High Commissioner for holding the same Referred to Section V. OUR SOVERAIGNE LORD With His Estates of Parliament Considering That albeit by many wholsom Laws made by his Royall Grand-father and Father of glorious memory and by himself in this and His other Parliaments since His happy Restauration the Protestant Religion is carefully asserted established and secured against Popery and Phanaticism Yet the restless Adversaries of our Religion doe not cease to propagat their errours and to seduce His Majesties Subjects from their duty to God and Loyalty to his Vice-gerent and to overturn the established Religion by introducing their Superstions and delusions into this Church and Kingdom And knowing that nothing can more encrease the numbers and confidence of Papists and Schismatical dissenters from the Established Church than the supine neglect of putting in Execution the good Laws provided against them together with their hopes to infinuat themselves into Offices and places of trust and publick Imployment THEREFORE His Majesty from His Princely and pious zeal to maintain and preserve the true Protestant Religion contained in the Confession of Faith recorded in the first Parliament of King James the Sixth which is founded on and agreeable to the written word of GOD DOETH with advise and consent of His Estates of Parliament Require and Command all his Officers Judges and Magistrats to put the Laws made against Popery and Papists Priests Jesuits and all persons of any other Order in the Popish Church especially against sayers and hearers of Mass Venders and dispersers of forbidden Books And Ressetters of Popish Priests and excommunicat Papists As also against all Phanatick Separatists from this National Church Against Preachers at House or Field-Conventicles and the Ressetters and harbourers of Preachers who are Intercommuned Against disorderly Baptisms and Marriages and irregular Ordinations and all other Schismaticall disorders To full and vigorous execution according to the Tenour of the Respective Acts of Parliament thereanent provided And that his Majesties Princely care to have these Laws put in Execution against those Enemies of the Protestant Religion may the more clearly appear HE DOETH with advise and consent foresaid STATUT and ORDAIN That the Ministers of each Paroch give up in October Yearly to their respective Ordinaries true and exact Lists of all Papists and Schismatical-withdrawers from the publick Worship in their respective Paroches which Lists are to be subscribed by them and that the Bishops give in a double of the saids Lists Subscribed by them to the respective Sheriffs Stewards Bailies of Royalty and Regalitie and Magistrats of Burghs To the effect the said Judges may proceed against them according to Law As also the Sheriffs and other Magistrats foresaids are hereby ordained to give an account to his Majesties Privy-Council in December yearly of their proceedings against those Papists and Phanatical Separatists as they will be answerable at their highest peril And that the diligences done by the Sheriffs Bailies of Regalities and other Magistrats foresaids may be the better enquired into by the Council the Bishops of the respective Diocesses are to send exact doubles of the Lists of the Papists and Phanaticks to the Clerks of Privy Council whereby the diligences of the Sheriffs and other Judges foresaids may be controlled and examined And to cut of all hopes from Papists and Phanaticks of their being imployed in Offices and Places of publick Trust. IT IS HEREBY STATUT and ORDAINED that the following Oath shall be taken by all Persons in Offices and places of publick Trust Civil Ecclesiastical and Military especially by all Members of Parliament and all Electors of Members of Parliament all Privy-Counsellors Lords of Session Members of the Exchequer Lords of Justiciary and all other Members of these Courts all Officers of the Crown and State all Arch-Bishops and Bishops and all Preachers and Ministers of the Gospel whatsoever all Persons of this Kingdom named or to be named Commissioners for the Borders all Members of the Commission for Church Affairs all Sheriffs Stewards Bailies of Royalties and Regalities Justices of the Peace Officers of the Mint Commissars and their Deputs their Clerks and Fiscals all Advocats and Procurators before any of these Courts all Writters to the Signet all Publick Nottars and
such Magistrates if there were any such This opinion of Calvin and his Followers taxed by Grotius Heb 12. 15. His reason for it Nam Magistratus illi inferiorum quidem ratione habità sunt publicae personae at superiores si considerentur privati sunt Grotius de jure Belli Pacis l. 1. cap. 4. sect 6. Another passage of Grotius wherein he allows resistance of Kings Si Rex habeat partem summi Imperii partem alteram populus aut senatus Regi in partem non suam involanti vi justè opponi poterit quia catenus imperium non habet quod locum habere censeo etlamsi dictum sit belli potestatem penes Regem fore id enim de Bello externo intelligendum est cùm alioqui quisquis Imperii summi partem habeat non possit non habere eam partem tuendi potestatem quod ubl fit potest Rex suam Imperii partem belli jure amittere Grot. Ibid. This passage the ground of Mr. B's justifying the late War No such Case possible as Grotius supposeth Sovereignty indivisible The division of the Roman Empire no division of Sovereignty Our English Heptarchy such Partners in the Empire upon what account The Case when a King is conditionally elected A King thus Elected a King in title only No division of the Sovereignty in this Case as being wholly in the People Grotius inconsistent with himself An account of the changes in the Roman States in none of which ever any Division of the Sovereignty The changes of Government in that State but three properly speaking The Sovereignty not divided all the while The Senate not Co-partners in it with the Emperor as Mr. B. would have it Grotius his design in his supposed Division of the Sovereignty to justifie the Netherlands war against the King of Spain A Book of his wherein he states the Case He lodges the Sovereignty all along in the States and makes K. Philip an Vsurper os it Lib. de Antiquitate Reipub Baravicae cap. 7. page 49. This however it may perhaps justifie his Countrymen doth not reach the Case in hand This further made out The whole Sovereignty he saith was always in the States De Antiquitate Relpub Batav p. 52. Ib. p. 49. Their Kings but Titular The States according to Grotius in their war with the King of Spain did but recover what was their own before upon these grounds if true that War no Rebellion The Sovereignty of necessity either wholly in the People or wholly in the King Sovereignty or the supreme Power is that in the Body Politick which the Soul is in the natural Body No such division of the Sovereignty in England If England a Monarchy as it is the King sole Sovereign Both which Mr. B. denies though sworn by him at his Ordination The Parliaments pretended Declaration about it inquired after No such Declaration to be heard of from any Parliament The House of Commons which with Mr. B. goes for the Parliament how Representatives of the People Of Representatives at last they made themselves Lords and Masters In their Addresses they always acknowledged the King their Sovereign If the two Houses either or both have a share in the Sovereignty they would have a title to Majesty also The King declared to be the only Supreme Governour by an Act of Parliament To wit by the Act of Vniformity H. C. 460. Mr. B. slights what he cannot answer Ibid. The Oath of Supremacy not made against Papists only as he saith The use Q. Elizabeth made of that Oath She justified her self in it by a publick Declaration Camd. Eliz. p. 39 40. Three things observed from that Declaration of Hers. The Supremacy the chief Prerogative of the Crown Two parts in the Oath of Supremacy the one Assertory the other Promissory In the Assertory part two Clauses one Affirmative the other Negative The later Clause discovers Papists The former Clause asserts the Monarchy What intended by swearing the King to be the only supreme Governour The distinction which the Rubrick makes betwixt those two Clauses Vid. The form and manner of making of Deacons The first Clause is called the Oath The second is rather an Abjuration The former Clause infers the later the later not the former The Kings being the only supreme Governor excludes all pretence to the Supremacy from any other as well at home as abroad Why not an express abjuration of the Supremacies being in any at home beside the King as of its being in any abroad The 1 Reason The 2 Reason There is a claim to the Supremacy from abroad no such pretence at home A Pamphlet in the late times taxed which makes the two Houses Co-ordinate with the King The project of Co-ordination utterly inconsistent with our Government The constitution the same now as ever The two Houses Petitioning the King a proof that there is no Co-ordination The King free to grant or deny as he pleaseth An Ordinance of both Houses with Mr. B. equivalent to an Act of Parliament No legal Authority for the late War against the King Nor can any pretence justifie it Mr. B. himself appealed to Holy Com. w. p. 441. The two Houses themselves acknowledged the power of the Sword to be in the King Some Remarks upon that acknowledgment The invalidity of their Ordinances made out The King asserts the Militia Vid. the Kings Answer from York to the 19 Propositions A remarkable passage in a Sermon of Arch-Bishop Usher at the Treaty in the Isle of Wight Sir Phil. Warwick a witness to that passage An objection against its credibility answered The Parliaments own acknowledgment further made out Tâ—e mischievousness of some of Mr. B. 's writings Heresie and Schism propagated by Books though the Authors themselves repent their errors An Instance of Brown the Father of the Brownists Mr. Baxter the Founder of the Baxterian Sect. His Anti-episcopal Aphorisms past by His Anti-monarchical Aphorisms justly excepted against The Soveraignty he saith divided betwixt King and Parliament and his Reasons to prove it Of his first Proof The Parliament hath always acknowledg'd the King their Soveraign The Oath of Supremacy proves it His second Proof from the Legislative power The Legislative power solely in the King By Parliament is meant not King Lords Commons but Lords and Commons that is the two Houses Mr. B. by Parliament often understands the House of Commons and in effect lodges the whole Legislative power in them How the two Houses come to be a Parliament The Lords summoned by the King The Commons chosen by the People with the King's leave The King gives the Parliament its being and continuance as he pleaseth The two Houses therefore not co-ordinate nor sharers in the Soveraignty with the King Vid. Grotium de Antiquitate Reipub. Batavicae What hurts the Crown hurts the People The Legislative power a branch of Soveraignty How far the two Houses concerned in that They only propose Bills The Royal Assent makes
I charge him with as being indeed the necessary Consequences of it For if the command of a lawfull thing by lawfull Authority be unlawfull if it may by accident be the occasion of Sin then indeed it will necessarily follow first that there ought to be no such Command or Imposition and secondly too that if there be any such Command or Imposition it ought to be taken away For Vno absurdo dato mille sequuntur that is If you grant one absurdity a thousand will follow at the heels of it and from this Topick he may conclude against the lawfulness of any Command whatsoever as I said before and as I then told him Whereupon as it is in my Letter when I first charged him with the horrible consequences of this Assertion of his he denyed the Assertion it self I mean he denied that he had asserted it untill the very words of it which he had written a little before with his own hand were produc'd and read before all the Company then indeed he added another reason why the Command of a lawfull thing by lawfull Authority might be unlawfull namely if it were commanded under an unjust penalty Whereunto he afterward added another or a 3d reason also namely if the Evil per Accidens were such as was foreseen and ought to have been prevented or provided against by the Commander But neither of these two last or additional reasons did make him quit or forego his first For it was that and onely that which he stuck to at last when his other two reasons were by our Disputants wrested from him or made useless to him as may appear to any rational man that will but cast an eye upon their Arguments and his Answers to them as they are annex'd to my Letter at the end of it where he shall find that our Disputants being to prove that what our Church commands to be done in the publick service of God by those of her Communion was lawfull for her to command Their first Argument was this viz. That Command supposing it to be the Command of a lawfull Superiour which commands an Act in it self lawfull and no other act or circumstance unlawfull is not sinfull But such were all the Commands or Injunctions of our Church in the book of Common-Prayer Ergo c. I Subjoyn the Minor to the Major of this Syllogism because by Mr. Baxter's not denying of the Minor which every one believed and expected he would have denied he seems to grant that to be true and consequently that there is nothing in that Book injoyned or commanded by our Church but what is lawfull in it self otherwise no doubt he would have denied the Minor rather than the Major but as I said before he denied the Major first because that may be a Sin per accidens which is not so in it self and therefore the command thereof may be unlawfull though that Accident be not in the Command This I say was the first reason he gave for his denying of the Major as he himself confesseth in his printed Address to those of Kidderminster Afterwards indeed upon my urging him with those horrid consequences of such an Assertion he added another reason for his denying the Major or for his denying the lawfulness of the command of a lawfull thing by a lawfull Superiour namely if it were commanded under an unjust penalty for the invalidating or nullifying rather of which second reason our Disputants second Syllogism was this That Command which commandeth an act in it self lawfull and no other act whereby any unjust penalty is enjoyned c. is a lawfull command But that which the Church commands is in it self lawfull and is not commanded under an unjust penalty Ergo c. And here again one would have thought Mr. Baxter would have denied the Minor but he did not and therefore as his not denying the Minor of the first Syllogism was in effect a Confession that our Church commands nothing in that Book but what is lawfull in it self so his not denying of the Minor of the second Syllogism is in effect a confession also that the Church injoyns nothing in that Book under an unjust penalty for still the Proposition he denies is the Major in this Syllogism as well as in the former without taking any exception to the Minor in either of them But why did he deny the Major of this Syllogism or what reason or reasons did he give for it Why the very self same and no other than he gave for his denial of the former namely because the first Act commanded may per Accidens be unlawfull and be commanded under an unjust penalty which in plain terms is all one as if he had said The Command of a thing lawfull in it self is sinfull because a thing lawfull in it self may by Accident become sinfull which is the very Assertion I charge him withall or because a thing commanded under no unjust penalty may be commanded under an unjust penalty Whereas our Major Proposition which he denied asserts the lawfulness of such a Command onely as is commanded under no unjust Penalty Yet because there was one starting hole more which Mr. Baxter might think to get out at namely that though the thing commanded were lawfull in it self and though it were commanded under no unjust Penalty yet if by Accident it might be the occasion of such an evil as the Commander ought to provide against the commanding of it must needs be sinfull and unlawfull to stop up this gap or starting hole I say our Disputants added a third Syllogism to the former of which the Major Proposition was this That Command which commandeth an Act in it self lawfull and no other Act whereby any unjust penalty is injoyned nor any circumstance whence directly or per Accidens any Sin is consequent which the Commander ought to provide against hath in it all things requisite to the lawfulness of it and particularly cannot be guilty of commanding an Act per Accidens unlawfull nor of commanding an Act under an unjust penalty But such are all the things commanded by our Church in the aforesaid Book Ergo c. And here again Mr. Baxter without excepting against the Minor Proposition denied the Major without giving any other reason for it but what he had given before which was in effect to grant both the Premisses and deny the Conclusion for the Major is so self-evident a Proposition that We thought he that could have the confidence to deny it was not a man any longer to be disputed with Now that these were our Arguments and that these were his Answers written and given in with his own hand appears by the attestation of Dr. Gunning now Bishop of Ely and Dr. Pearson now Bishop of Chester and then both of them the Primarii Professores Theologiae the King 's and the Lady Margaret's Professours of Divinity in the University of Cambridge and two of
the three Disputantsfor the common-prayer-Common-Prayer-Book against Mr. Baxter and his Assistants which Attestation of theirs being printed and published twenty years ago and never since contradicted or so much as questioned by any of the contrary party no not so much as by Mr. Baxter himself to this day I hope there needs no other proof of the truth of it And if that Attestation be true then it is evident that Mr. Baxter did affirm and maintain as well as he could from first to last in the Conference That the command of a thing lawfull in it self by lawfull Authority was unlawfull if by Accident it might be the occasion of Sin though it were not commanded under an unjust penalty and though that evil whereof it might be the occasion by Accident were not such as the Commander was obliged to provide against For all this he thatdenies the aforesaid Major Proposition of the last of the aforesaid three Syllogisms as Mr. Baxter did must needs grant and consequently must he needs grant and assert also if he will not contradict himself That any command of anything though never so lawfull in it self by what Authority soever it is commanded is unlawfull if it may be the occasion of Sin though per Accidens onely and though that Accidental Sin or evil be such as the Commander either did not or could not foresee or was not obliged to provide against it For all this is consequentially and necessarily affirmed and asserted by him that denies the aforesaid Major Proposition for no other reason but because the Command may by Accident be the Occasion of Sin But if Mr. Baxter shall say he gave another reason for his denial of the aforesaid Proposition namely that such a Command though never so lawfull in it self might become unlawfull if it were commanded under an unjust penalty I confess he did but most illogically and irrationally because one of the conditions of the Command which the Proposition affirms and Mr. Baxter denies to be lawfull is that it must not be commanded under an unjust penalty and the reason why Mr. Baxter denies it to be lawfull is because it is or at least it may be commanded under an unjust Penalty which is all one as if he had said that which is not so is so because it may be so This reason therefore being so expressly excluded as it is from being any reason at all why the Proposition which Mr. Baxter denied should be or could be denied with any shew or colour of reason there was nothing left him to resort to or rely on as his last refuge but his first reason namely because such a command though it was not commanded under an unjust penalty yet it might be the occasion of Sin per Accidens and therefore unlawfull to be commanded which being given for a reason for his denying of the aforesaid Proposition of the last Syllogism he could not mean it of such an evil per Accidens as that the commander ought to provide against because it was another of the Conditions expressly required by the Proposition it self to make a Command lawfull that as it should not command any thing evil in it self so it should not command any thing neither though never so good in it self that might by accident be the occasion of such an evil as the Commander ought to prevent or provide against so that the occasion of evil in that sense per Accidens could not be the reason why Mr. Baxter denied the Proposition and therefore by evil per Accidens in relation to this Proposition and his denial of it he must needs mean such an evil per Accidens as was neither commanded under an unjust penalty nor such as the Commander was obliged to hinder or prevent Whence it follows that Bishop Morley's charging him with asserting That the command of that which is lawfull in it self is unlawfull if it may by Accident be the occasion of Sin was not as Mr. Baxter saith it was a gross mistake or any mistake at all though he had not asserted it in terminis or in express terms as he did often when he gave it for the first of his reasons why he denied the Major Proposition of the first of the aforesaid Syllogisms CHAP. IX His instances of Things lawfull in themselves becoming unlawfull by Accident Impertinent to the present business FRom hence it follows likewise that all those Instances which Mr. Baxter assigns and alledges in his Narrative to his friends at Kidderminster to free himself from the Assertion I charge him with and which his denial of the aforesaid Proposition doth necessarily and manifestly convince him of are all of them frivolous and impertinent and not so onely but fraudulent and scandalous and injurious also I mean those instances which he gives of such evils per Accidens as make the Commands of things good and lawfull in themselves to become evil and unlawfull As saith he To command out a Navy to Sea is not unlawfull in it self but if it were foreseen they would fall into the enémies hands or were like to perish by any Accident and the necessity of sending them were small or none it were a Sin to send them Again saith Mr. Baxter it is not unlawfull of it self to sell poison or to give a knife to another or to bid another to doe it but if it were foreseen he must mean by him that sells the poyson or gives the knife that they will be used to poyson or kill the buyer he might have added or any body else it is unlawfull He goes on and saith It is not of it self unlawfull to light a Candle or set fire on straw but if it may be he should have said if it be foreknown to him that by another's negligence or wilfulness it is like to set fire to the City or give fire to a train of Gun-powder that is under the Parliament House when the King and Parliament are there I crave the Bishop's pardon saith he for believing it were Sinfull to doe or command it You have it Mr. Baxter you have the Bishop's pardon not onely for believing as you say you do in this last but in all the former particulars which you instance in also And I do assure you the Bishop believes them all as much as you do and so I am confident do all the Episcopal Party in England for they are all of them notoriously and unquestionably true and are undoubtedly sufficient to prove the Command of a thing lawfull in it self to be unlawfull if the Commander foresees it will be by Accident the cause or occasion of such an evil or mischief as he ought to prevent But what is this to the proving the Command of a thing lawfull in it self to be unlawfull if it may be by Accident the cause or occasion of some such evil as the Commander doth not foresee or is not bound to prevent For such a Command it must be that
that a free People or a People that were sui juris At their own disposal and under no Government at all if there were ever such a people in the World might not voluntarily and lawfully submit themselves to the Government of one or more Governours without any antecedent Pact or Covenant to limit him or them in his or their Government and for proof of this he must produce some universal binding Law to the contrary which untill he can doe I do and must still affirm that unlimited Governours supposing them to be no Usurpers and that they do not reign tyrannically as certainly there be some that do not are not all of them Tyrants because they are unlimited or such as have no right to their Governments upon that account onely and consequently that this Aphorism of Mr. Baxter's which affirms the contrary is false and would be Treason and justly punishable as Treason if it were affirmed by a Subject of a Despotical Prince or Sovereign such as all Kings at first were and such as all Kings in the East and West Indies and in Africk and some in Europe as the Turk and Muscovite and French King are at this day Whereunto may be added the unlimited Right and Title which Conquerours have over those they have conquered I mean such Conquerours as by a just War are become Lords and Masters of the lives and fortunes of those they have subdued whether they be Rebels or Enemies and therefore as they may justly save the lives of as many or as few as they please so and much more so may they justly govern those whose lives they have saved as they think fit and most for their own advantage as the Israelites did the Gibeonites making them Hewers of Wood and drawers of Water that is by employing them in all manner of drudgery and servile works And thus and worse than thus David did to the Ammonites even to all the people of the cities of Ammon saith the Text which he had conquered putting them under sawes and harrows of iron and making them pass through the Brick-kilns because they had violated the jus Gentium or the law of Nations by the barbarous usage of his Ambassadours whom out of kindness he had sent unto them And yet which is observable the Ammonites were none of those Nations which God had devoted to destruction and commanded the Israelites to make war upon but it was a War the Ammonites had justly drawn upon themselves with the sad and severe effects of it And what if our King having been so long and so continuedly and so outragiously injured and provoked by the Algerines robbing and pillaging of his Ships and inslaving and murthering of his Subjects should make War upon them and by God's blessing vanquish and subdue them making himself Master of all they have both of strength and wealth both by Sea and Land and of that den of Thieves it self I mean the City of Argiers might he not if he would justly destroy them all or if he thought it better for himself or more for his own Interest sell them all for slaves or use them all as slaves to tugg at the Oar all their life long in their own Galleys or to dig in Mines and Quarries or to mend high ways or to put them to any other toilsome or sordid labour and to have nothing for it but brown Bisket and water for their food and for their clothing any thing that will but cover their nakedness and all this while to be beaten as often and as much as their Task-masters shall think fit to inflict it This would be very hard usage you will say but no harder than that wherewith they have used others nor no harder than a Conquerour may most justly inflict on such inhumane Monsters and such profest Enemies of all mankind as they are Howsoever I hope Mr. Baxter will not deny such a Conquerour to be an unlimited Governour of those whom he hath so conquered and yet to have a just right and Title to his unlimited Government as every Master hath likewise over his slaves whether they be born in his house or bought with his money without capitulating with them before-hand how he shall govern them or how they will be governed by him But may not a People though conquered in a just War and deservedly made and used as slaves and Vassals by the Conquerour doe what they can to free themselves from that slavery and servitude Mr. Baxter thinks they may as appears by what he saith Page 193 of his Holy-Commonwealth where he tells us that Dominatio that is in his sense any unlimited Government is penal to the Subjects and they may escape it if they can yea though they have submitted themselves to such a servitude and consequently à fortiori By stronger reason they may doe what they can to free themselves from it if they be forced by a Conquerour to submit to it But this was not the judgment or doctrine of the Prophet Jeremy for Nebuchadnezzar had no right or title but that of Conquest to that unlimited power he exercised over the Jews by making what Viceroys he pleased to govern them and by imposing and exacting what tribute he pleased from them and by forcing their King his Vassal to take an Oath of Allegeance to him which is called the Oath of God and for the breaking whereof Zedechiah whom Nebuchadnezzar after he had deposed Jehoiachim made his Viceroy under him seeking to free himself and the people from that bondage or unlimited power which the King of Babylon exercised over them is by God himself declared to be a Rebel and his endeavouring to cast off that unlimited yoke is called Rebellion and Rebellion it could not be unless it had been a rising up against a rightfull Sovereign and therefore as God called it a Rebellion so he punish'd it as a Rebellion by giving up Jerusalem and Zedechiah himself into the hands of him against whom he had rebelled who after he had slain his Children before his eyes he presently caused them to be put out that the slaughter of his Children might be the last thing he should ever see and then carried him captive unto Babylon and kept him in a dungeon till he died he caused likewise the walls of Jerusalem to be broken down and the House of God it self that glorious fabrick that wonder of the World to be destroyed and all the Nobility Clergy Gentry and Artificers of the Nation to be carried away captive also together with all the wealth and whatsoever was worth the carrying away leaving nothing but some of the poorer sort of labouring People to dress and till the ground and to keep it from being overrun with wild beasts So that all the Jews got by this and their former Rebellion against the King of Assyria was but the making of their yoke harder to be born and heavier than it was before as