pleased only to affirm it without giving the least shadow of a reason to perswade us to believe him This might justify me if I should reject his assertion as a thing said gratis but I may safely go a step farther and affirm That men lived under Laws before there were any Kings which cannot be denied if such a Power necessarily belongs to Kings as he ascribes to them For Nimrod who established his Kingdom in Babel is the first who by the Scripture is said to have bin a mighty one in the Earth He was therefore the first King or Kings were not mighty and he being the first King Mankind must have lived till his time without Laws or else Laws were made before Kings To say that there was then no Law is in many respects most absurd for the nature of man cannot be without it and the violences committed by ill men before the Flood could not have bin blamed if there had bin no Law for that which is not cannot be transgressed Cain could not have seared that every man who met him would slay him if there had not bin a Law to slay him that had slain another But in this case the Scripture is clear at least from the time that Noah went out of the Ark for God then gave him a Law sufficient for the state of things at that time if all violence was prohibited under the name of shedding Blood tho not under the same penalty as Murder But Penal Laws being in vain if there be none to execute them such as know God dos nothing in vain may conclude that he who gave this Law did appoint some way for its execution tho unknown to us There is therefore a Law not given by Kings but laid upon such as should be Kings as well as on any other Persons by one who is above them and perhaps I may say that this Law presseth most upon them because they who have most power do most frequently break out into acts of Violence and most of all disdain to have their will restrained and he that will exempt Kings from this Law must either find that they are excepted in the Text or that God who gave it has not a Power over them Moreover it has bin proved at the beginning of this Treatise that the first Kings were of the accursed race and reigned over the accursed Nations whilst the holy Seed had none If therefore there was no Law where there was no King the accursed Posterity of Cham had Laws when the blessed Descendents of Shem had none which is most absurd the word Outlaw or Lawless being often given to the wicked but never to the just and righteous The impious folly of such Assertions gos farther than our Author perhaps suspected for if there be no Law where there is no King the Israelites had no Law till Saul was made King and then the Law they had was from him They had no King before sor they asked one They could not have asked one of Samuel if he had bin a King He had not bin offended and God had not imputed to them the sin of rejecting him if they had asked that only which he had set over them If Samuel were not King Moses Joshua and the other Judges were not Kings for they were no more than he They had therefore no King and consequently if our Author say true no Law If they had no Law till Saul was King they never had any for he gave them none and the Prophets were to blame for denouncing judgments against them for receding from or breaking their Law if they had none He cannot say that Samuel gave them a Law for that which he wrote in a Book and laid up before the Lord was not a Law to the People but to the King If it had bin a Law to the People it must have bin made publick but as it was only to the King he laid it up before God to restify against him if he should adventure to break it Or if it was a Law to the People the matter is not mended for it was given in the time of a King by one who was not King But in truth it was the Law of the Kingdom by which he was King and had bin wholly impertinent if it was not to bind him for it was given to no other person and to no other end Our Author's Assertion upon which all his Doctrine is grounded That there is no Nation that allows Children any action or remedy for being unjustly governed is as impudently false as any other proposed by him for tho a Child will not be heard that complains of the Rod yet our own Law gives relief to Children against their Fathers as well as against other persons that do them injuries upon which we see many ill effects and I do rather relate than commend the practice In other places the Law gives relief against the extravagancies of which Fathers may be guilty in relation to their Children tho not to that excess as to bring them so near to an equality as in England They cannot imprison sell or kill their Children without exposing themselves to the same punishments with other men and if they take their Estates from them the Law is open and gives relief against them but on the other side Children are punished with Death if they strike or outragiously abuse their Parents which is not so with us Now if the Laws of Nations take such care to preserve private men from being too hardly used by their true and natural Fathers who have such a love and tenderness for them in their own Blood that the most wicked and barbarous do much more frequently commit crimes for them than against them how much more necessary is it to restrain the fury that Kings who at the best are but phantastical Fathers may exercise to the destruction of the whole People 'T is a folly to say that David and some other Kings have had or that all should have a tenderness of affection towards their People as towards their Children for besides that even the first Proposition is not acknowledged and will be hardly verified in any one instance there is a vast distance between what men ought to be and what they are Every man ought to be just true and charitable and if they were so Laws would be of no use but it were a madness to abolish them upon a supposition that they are so or to leave them to a future punishment which many do not believe or not regard I am not obliged to believe that David loved every Israelite as well as his Son Absalom but tho he had I could not from thence inser that all Kings do so unless I were sure that all of them were as wise and virtuous as he But to come more close to the matter Do we not know of many Kings who have come to their Power by the most wicked means that can enter into the heart of man even
were in them Secondly Neither Plato nor Aristotle acknowledg either reason or justice in the power os a Monarch unless he has more of the Virtues conducing to the good of the Civil Society than all those who compose it and employ them for the publick advantage and not to his own pleasure and profit as being set up by those who seek their own good for no other reason than that he should procure it To this end a Law is set as a rule to him and the best men that is such as are most like to himself made to be his Assistants because say they Lex est mens sine affectu quasi Deus whereas the best of men have their affections and passions and are subject to be misled by them Which shews that as the Monarch is not sor himself nor by himself he dos not give but receive power nor admit others to the participation of it but is by them admitted to what he has Whereupon they conclude that to prefer the absolute power of a man as in those Governments which they call Barbarorum regna before the regular Government of Kings justly exercising a power instituted by Law and directed to the publick good is to chuse rather to be subject to the lust of a Beast than to be governed by a God And because such a choice can only be made by a Beast I leave our Author to find a description of himself in their Books which he so often cites But if Aristotle deserve credit the Princes who reign for themselves and not for the People preferring their own pleasure or profit before the publick become Tyrants which in his language is Enemies to God and Man On this account Boccalini introduces the Princes of Europe raising a mutiny against him in Parnassus for giving such definitions of Tyrants as they said comprehended them all and forcing the poor Philosopher to declare by a new definition that Tyrants were certain men of antient times whose race is now extinguished But with all his Wit and Learning he could not give a reason why those who do the same things that rendred the Antient Tyrants detestable should not be so also in our days In the third place The Scriptures declare the necessity of setting bounds to those who are placed in the highest dignities Moses seems to have had as great abilities as any man that ever lived in the world but he alone was not able to bear the weight of the Government and therefore God appointed Seventy chosen men to be his assistants This was a perpetual Law to Israel and as no King was to have more power than Moses or more abilities to perform the duties of his Office none could be exempted from the necessity of wanting the like helps Our Author therefore must confess that they are Kings who have them or that Kingly Government is contrary to the Scriptures When God by Moses gave liberty to his People to make a King he did it under these conditions He must be one of their Brethren They must chuse him he must not multiply Gold Silver Wives or Horses he must not lift up his Heart above his Brethren And Josephus paraphrasing upon the place says He shall do nothing without the advice of the Sanhedrin or if he do they shall oppose him This agrees with the confession of Zedekiah to the Princes which was the Sanhedrin The King can do nothing without you and seems to have bin in pursuance of the Law of the Kingdom which was written in a Book and laid up before the Lord and could not but agree with that of Mosis unless they spake by different Spirits or that the Spirit by which they did speak was subject to error or change and the whole series of God's Law shews that the Pride Magnificence Pomp and Glory usurped by their Kings was utterly contrary to the will of God They did lift up their hearts above their Brethren which was for bidden by the Law All the Kings of Israel and most of the Kings of Jadah utterly rejected it and every one of them did very much depart from the observation of it I will not deny that the People in their institution of a King intended they should do so they had done it themselves and would have a King that might uphold them in their disobedience they were addicted to the Idolatry of their accursed Neighbours and desired that Government by which it was maintained amongst them In doing this they did not reject Samuel but they rejected God that he should not reign over them They might perhaps believe that unless their King were such as the Law did not permit he would not perform what they intended or that the name of King did not belong to him unless he had a power that the Law denied But since God and his Prophets give the name of King to the chief Magistrate endow'd with a power that was restrain'd within very narrow limits whom they might without offence set up we also may safely give the same to those of the same nature whether it please Fihner or not 4. The practice of most Nations and I may truly say of all that deserve imitation has bin as directly contrary to the absolute power of one man as their Constitutions or if the original of many Governments lie hid in the impenetrable darkness of Antiquity their progress may serve to shew the intention of the Founders Aristotle seems to think that the first Monarchs having bin chosen for their Virtue were little restrain'd in the exercise of their Power but that they or their Children falling into Corruption and Pride grew odious and that Nations did on that account either abolish their Authority or create Senates and other Magistrates who having part of the Power might keep them in order The Spartan Kings were certainly of this nature and the Persian till they conquer'd Babylon Nay I may safely say that neither the Kings which the frantick people set up in opposition to the Law of God nor those of the bordering Nations whose example they chose to follow had that absolute power which our Author attributes to all Kings as inseparable from the name Achish the Philistin lov'd and admir'd David he look'd upon him as an Angel of God and promised that he should be the keeper of his head for ever but when the Princes suspected him and said he shall not go down with us to Battel he was obliged to dismiss him This was not the language of Slaves but of those who had a great part in the Government and the Kings submission to their will shows that he was more like to the Kings of Sparta than to an absolute Monarch who dos whatever pleases him I know not whether the Spartans were descended from the Hebrews as some think but their Kings were under a regulation much like that of the 17 of Deut. tho they had two Their Senate of twenty eight and the Ephori
taking upon him to be King till the Tribe of Judah had chosen him that he often acknowledged Saul to be his Lord. When Baanah and Rechab brought the head of Ishbosheth to him he commanded them to be slain Because they had killed a righteous man upon his Bed in his own House which he could not have said if Ishbosheth had unjustly detained from him the ten Tribes and that he had a right to reign over them before they had chosen him The Word of God did not make him King but only foretold that he should be King and by such ways as he pleased prepared the hearts of the People to set him up and till the time designed by God for that work was accomplished he pretended to no other Authority than what the six hundred men who first followed him afterwards the Tribe of Judah and at last all the rest of the People conferred upon him I no way defend Absalom's revolt he was wicked and acted wickedly but after his death no man was ever blamed or questioned for siding with him and Amasa who commanded his Army is represented in Scripture as a good man even David saying that Joab by slaying Abner and Amasa had killed two men who were better than himself which could not have bin unless the People had a right of looking into matters of Government and of redressing abuses tho being deceived by Absalom they so far erred as to prefer him who was in all respects wicked before the man who except in the matter of Uriah is said to be after God's own heart This right was acknowledged by David himself when he commanded Hushai to say to Absalom I will be thy Servant O King and by Hushai in the following Chapter Nay but whom the Lord and his People and all the men of Israel chuse his will I be and with him will I abide which could have no sense in it unless the People had a right of chusing and that the choice in which they generally concurred was esteemed to be from God But if Saul who was made King by the whole People and anointed by the command of God might be lawfully resisted when he departed from the Law of his Institution it cannot be doubted that any other for the like reason may be resisted If David tho designed by God to be King and anointed by the hand of the Prophet was not King till the People had chosen him and he had made a Covenant with them it will if I mistake not be hard to find a man who can claim a right which is not originally from them And if the People of Israel could erect and pull down institute abrogate or transfer to other Persons or Families Kingdoms more firmly established than any we know the same right cannot be denied to other Nations SECT II. The Kings of Israel and Judah were under a Law not safely to be transgress'd OUR Author might be pardon'd if he only vented his own follies but he aggravates his own crime by imputing them to men of more Credit and tho I cannot look upon Sir Walter Raleigh as a very good Interpreter of Scripture he had too much understanding to say That if practice declare the greatness of Authority even the best Kings of Israel and Judah were not tied to any Law but they did whatsoever they pleased in the greatest matters for there is no sense in those words If practice declares the greatness of Authority even the best were tied to no Law signifies nothing for practice cannot declare the greatness of Authority Peter the Cruel of Castille and Christiern the 2d of Denmark kill'd whom they pleas'd but no man ever thought they had therefore a right to do so and if there was a Law all were tied by it and the best were less likely to break it than the worst But if Sir Walter Raleigh's opinion which he calls a conjecture be taken there was so great a difference between the Kings of Israel and Judah that as to their general proceedings in point of Power hardly any thing can be said which may rightly be applied to both and he there endeavours to show that the reason why the ten Tribes did not return to the house of David after the destruction of the houses of Jeroboam and Baasba was because they would not endure a Power so absolute as that which was exercised by the house of David If he has therefore any where said that the Kings did what they pleased it must be in the sense that Moses Maimonides says The Kings of Israel committed many extravagancies because they were insolent impious and despisers of the Law But whatsoever Sir Walter Raleigh may say for I do not remember his words and have not leisure to seek whether any such are found in his Books 't is most evident that they did not what they pleased The Tribes that did not submit to David nor crown him till they thought fit and then made a Covenant with him took care it might be observed whether he would or not Absalom's Rebellion follow'd by almost all Israel was a terrible check to his Will That of Sheba the Son of Bichri was like to have bin worse if it had not bin suppressed by Joab's diligence and David often confessed the Sons of Zerviah were too hard for him Solomon indeed overthrowing the Law given by Moses multiplying Gold and Silver Wives and Horses introducing Idolatry and lifting up his heart above his Brethren did what he pleased but Rehoboam paid for all the ten Tribes revolted from him by reason of the heavy burdens laid upon them stoned Adoram who was sent to levy the Tributes and set up Jeroboam who as Sir Walter Raleigh says in the place before cited had no other Title than the curtesy of the People and utterly rejected the house of David If practice therefore declares a right the practice of the People to avenge the injuries they suffered from their Kings as soon as they found a man fit to be their Leader shews they had a right of doing it 'T is true the best of the Kings with Moses Joshua and Samuel may in one sense be said to have done what they pleased because they desired to do that only which was good But this will hardly be brought to confer a right upon all Kings And I deny that even the Kings of Judah did what they pleased or that it were any thing to our question if they did Zedekiah professed to the great men that is to the Sanhedrin that without them he could do nothing When Amaziah by his folly had brought a great slaughter upon the Tribe of Judah they conspired against him in publick Council whereupon he fled to Lachish and they pursuing him thither killed him avowed the Fact and it was neither question'd nor blamed which examples agree with the paraphrase of Josephus on Deut. 17. He shall do nothing without the consent of the Sanhedrin and if
which they are condemned perpetually to the Gallies and such as are aiding to them to grievous Fines But before this be acknowledged to have any similitude or relation to our discourse concerning Kings it must be proved that the present King or those under whom he claims is or were Proprietors of all the Lands in England and granted the several parcels under the condition of suffering patiently such Inconveniences and Miseries as are above-mentioned or that they who did confer the Crown upon any of them did also give a Propriety in the Land which I do not find in any of the fifteen or sixteen Titles that have bin since the coming in of the Normans and if it was not done to the first of every one it cannot accrue to the others unless by some new act to the same purpose which will not easily be produced It will be no less difficult to prove that any thing unworthy of freemen is by any Tenures imposed in England unless it be the offering up of the Wives and Daughters of Tenants to the Lust of Abbots and Monks and they are so far from being willingly suffer'd that since the Dens and Nurseries of those Beasts were abolished no man that succeeds them has had impudence sufficient to exact the performance and tho the letter of the Law may favour them the turpitude of the thing has extinguished the usage But even the Kings of Israel and Judah who brought upon the People those evils that had bin foretold by Samuel did not think they had a right to the Powers they exercised If the Law had given a right to Ahab to take the best of their Vineyards he might without ceremony have taken that of Naboth and by the majestick power of an absolute Monarch have chastized the churlish Clown who resused to sell or change it for another but for want of it he was obliged to take a very different course If the lives of Subjects had in the like manner depended upon the will of Kings David might without scruple have killed Vriah rather than to place him in the front of the Army that he might fall by his own courage The malice and treachery of such Proceedings argues a defect of power and he that acts in such an oblique manner shews that his actions are not warranted by the Law which is boldly executed in the face of the Sun This shews the interpretation put upon the words Against thee only have I sinned by Court-flatterers to be false If he had not sinned against Bathsheba whom he corrupted Vriah whom he caused to be killed the People that he scandalized and the Law which he violated he had never endeavoured to cover his guilt by so vile a sraud And as he did not thereby fly the sight of God but of men 't is evident that he in that action feared men more than God If by the Examples of Israel and Judah we may judg whether the Inconveniences and Miseries brought upon Nations by their Kings be tolerable or intolerable it will be enough to consider the madness of Sauls cruelty towards his Subjects and the slaughter brought upon them by the hand of the Philistins on Mount Gilboa where he fell with the flower of all Israel the Civil Wars that hapned in the time of David and the Plague brought upon the People by his wickedness the heavy burdens laid upon them by Solomon and the Idolatry favour'd by him the wretched folly of Rehoboam and the defection of the ten Tribes caused by it the Idolatry established by Jeroboam and the Kings of Israel and that of many of those of Judah also the frequent Wars and unheard of Slaughters ensuing thereupon between the Tribes the daily devastations of the Country by all sorts of Strangers the murders of the Prophets the abolition of God's Worship the desolation of Towns and Provinces the Captivity of the ten Tribes carried away into unknown Countries and in the end the abolition of both Kingdoms with the captivity of the Tribe of Judah and the utter destruction of the City It cannot be said that these things were suffer'd under Kings and not from or by them for the desolation of the Cities People and Country is in many places of Scripture imputed to the Kings that taught Israel to sin as appears by what was denounced against Jeroboam Jehu Ahaz Manasseh Zedekiah and others Nay the Captivity of Babylon with the evils ensuing were first announced to Hezekiah for his vanity and Josiah by the like brought a great slaughter upon himself and people But if mischiess fell upon the People by the frailty of these who after David were the best nothing surely less than the utmost of all Miseries could be expected from such as were set to do evil and to make the Nation like to themselves in which they met with too great success If it be pretended that God's People living under an extraordinary Dispensation can be no example to us I desire other Histories may be examined for I confess I know no Nation so great happy and prosperous nor any Power so well established that two or three ill Kings immediately succeeding each other have not bin able to destroy and bring to such a condition that it appeared the Nations must perish unless the Senates Diets and other Assemblies of State had put a stop to the mischief by restraining or deposing them and tho this might be proved by innumerable Testimonies I shall content my self with that of the Roman Empire which perished by the vices corruption and baseness of their Princes the noble Kingdom of the Goths in Spain overthrown by the Tyranny of Witza and Rodrigo the present state of Spain now languishing and threatning ruin from the same causes France brought to the last degree of misery and weakness by the degenerate races of Pharamond and Charles preserved and restored by the Virtues of Pepin and Capet to which may be added those of our own Country which are so well known that I need not mention them SECT VI. 'T is not good for such Nations as will have Kings to suffer them to be glorious powerful or abounding in Riches OUR Author having hitherto spoken of all Nations as born under a necessity of being subject to Absolute Monarchy which he pretends to have bin set up by the universal and indispensible Law of God and Nature now seems to leave to their discretion whether they will have a King or not but says that those who will have a King are bound to allow him Royal maintenance by providing Revenues for the Crown since it is for the Honour Profit and Safety of the People to have their King glorious powerful and abounding in Riches If there be any thing of sense in this Clause there is nothing of truth in the foundation or principle of his whole Book For as the right and being of a Father is natural or inherent and no ways depending upon the will of the Child that of a
says governed by God rather than by men whilst those who subjected themselves to the will of a man were governed by a beast This being so our Author's next clause That tho a King do frame all his Actions to be according unto Law yet he is not bound thereunto but as his good will and for good example or so far forth as the general Law for the safety of the Commonwealth doth naturally bind him is wholly impertinent For if the King who governs not according to Law degenerates into a Tyrant he is obliged to frame his actions according to Law or not to be a King for a Tyrant is none but as contrary to him as the worst of men is to the best But if these obligations were untied we may easily guess what security our Author's word can be to us that the King of his own good will and for a good example will frame his actions according to the Laws when experience instructs us that notwithstanding the strictest Laws and most exquisite Constitutions that men of the best abilities in the world could ever invent to restrain the irregular appetites of those in power with the dreadful examples of vengeance taken against such as would not be restrained they have frequently broken out and the most powerful have for the most part no otherwise distinguished themselves from the rest of men than by the enormity of their vices and being the most forward in leading others to all manner of crimes by their example SECT XVI The observation of the Laws of Nature is absurdly expected from Tyrants who set themselves up against all Laws and he that subjects Kings to no other Law than what is common to Tyrants destroys their being OUR Authors last clause acknowledging Kings to be bound by a general Law to provide for the safety of the People would be sufficient for my purpose if it were sincere for municipal Laws do only shew how that should be performed and if the King by departing from that rule degenerates as he says into a Tyrant 't is easily determined what ought then to be done by the People But his whole book being a heap of contradictions and frauds we can rely upon nothing that he says And his following words which under the same Law comprehend both Kings and Tyrants shew that he intends Kings should be no otherwise obliged than Tyrants which is not at all By this means says he are all Kings even Tyrants and Conquerors bound to preserve the Lands Goods Liberties and Lives of all their Subjects not by any municipal Law of the Land so much as by the natural Law of a Father which obligeth them to ratify the Acts of their Forefathers and Predecessors in things necessary for the publick good of their Subjects If he be therefore in the right Tyrants and Conquerors are Kings and Fathers The words that have bin always thought to comprehend the most irreconcileable contrariety the one expressing the most tender love and care evidently testified by the greatest obligations conferred upon those who are under it the other the utmost of all injuries that can be offer'd to men signify the same thing There is no difference between a Magistrate who is what he is by Law and a publick Enemy who by force or fraud sets himself up against all Law And what he said before that Kings degenerated into Tyrants signifies nothing for Tyrants also are Kings His next words are no less incomprehensible for neither King nor Tyrant can be obliged to preserve the Lands Goods and Liberties of their Subjects if they have none But as Liberty consists only in being subject to no man's will and nothing denotes a Slave but a dependence upon the will of another if there be no other Law in a Kingdom than the will of a Prince there is no such thing as Liberty Property also is an appendage to Liberty and 't is as impossible for a man to have a right to Lands or Goods if he has no Liberty and enjoys his Life only at the pleasure of another as it is to enjoy either when he is deprived of them He therefore who says Kings and Tyrants are bound to preserve their Subjects Lands Liberties Goods and Lives and yet lays for a foundation that Laws are no more than the significations of their Pleasure seeks to delude the world with words which signify nothing The vanity of these whimseys will farther appear if it be considered that as Kings are Kings by Law and Tyrants are Tyrants by overthrowing the Law they are most absurdly joined together and 't is not more ridiculous to set him above the Law who is what he is by the Law than to expect the observation of the Laws that enjoin the preservation of the Lands Liberties Goods and Lives of the People from one who by fraud or violence makes himself master of all that he may be restrain'd by no Law and is what he is by subverting all Law Besides if the safety of the People be the supreme Law and this safety extend to and consist in the preservation of their Liberties Goods Lands and Lives that Law must necessarily be the root and beginning as well as the end and limit of all magistratical Power and all Laws must be subservient and subordinate to it The question will not then be what pleases the King but what is good for the People not what conduces to his profit or glory but what best secures the Liberties he is bound to preserve he dos not therefore reign for himself but for the People he is not the Master but the Servant of the Commonwealth and the utmost extent of his Prerogative is to be able to do more good than any private man If this be his work and duty 't is easily seen whether he is to judg of his own performance or they by whom and for whom he reigns and whether in order to this he be to give Laws or to receive them 'T is ordinarily said in France Il faut que chacun soit servi a sa mode Every mans business must be done according to his own mind and if this be true in particular Persons 't is more plainly so in whole Nations Many eyes see more than one the collected wisdom of a People much surpasses that of a single Person and tho he should truly seek that which is best 't is not probable he would so easily find it as the body of a Nation or the principal men chosen to represent the whole This may be said with justice of the best and wisest Princes that ever were but another Language is to be used when we speak of those who may succeed and who very often through the defects of Age Person or Sex are neither fit to judg of other mens affairs nor of their own and are so far from being capable of the highest Concernments relating to the safety of whole Nations that the most trivial cannot reasonably be referred to them There are few men
a Commonwealths-man as Cato but the washed Swine will return to the Mire He overthrows all by a preposterous conjunction of the rights os Kings which are just and by Law with those of Tyrants which are utterly against Law and gives the sacred and gentle name os Father to those Beasts who by their actions declare themselves enemies not only to all Law and Justice but to Mankind that cannot subsist without them This requires no other proof than to examine whether Attila or Tamerlan did well deserve to be called Fathers of the Countries they destroy'd The first of these was usually called the scourge of God and he gloried in the Name The other being reproved for the detestable cruelties he exercised made answer You speak to me as to a man I am not a man but the scourge of God and plague of Mankind This is certainly sweet and gentle Language savouring much of a fatherly tenderness There is no doubt that those who use it will provide for the safety of the Nations under them and the preservation of the Laws of Nature is rightly referred to them and 't is very probable that they who came to burn the Countries and destroy the Nations that fell under their power should make it their business to preserve them and look upon the former Governors as their Fathers whose acts they were obliged to confirm tho they seldom attained to the Dominion by any other means than the slaughter of them and their Families But if the enmity be not against the Nation and the cause of the war be only for Dominion against the ruling Person or Family as that of Baasha against the house of Jeroboam of Zimri against that of Baasha of Omri against Zimri and of Jehu against Joram the prosecution of it is a strange way of becoming the Son of the Person destroyed And Filmer alone is subtil enough to discover that Jehu by extinguishing the house of Ahab drew an obligation upon himself of looking on him as his Father and confirming his acts If this be true Moses was obliged to confirm the acts of the Kings of the Amalekites Moabites and Amorites that he destroy'd the same duty lay upon Joshua in relation to the Cananites but 't is not so easily decided to which of them he did owe that deference for the same could not be due to all and 't is hard to believe that by killing above thirty Kings he should purchase to himself so many Fathers and the like may be said of divers others Moreover there is a sort of Tyrant who has no Father as Agathocles Dionysius Cesar and generally all those who subvert the Liberties of their own Countrey And if they stood obliged to look upon the former Magistrates as their Predecessors and to confirm their Acts the first should have bin to give impunity and reward to any that would kill them it having bin a fundamental Maxim in those States That any man might kill a Tyrant This being in all respects ridiculous and absurd 't is evident that our Author who by proposing such a false security to Nations for their Liberties endeavours to betray them is not less treacherous to Kings when under a pretence of defending their rights he makes them to be the same with those of Tyrants who are known to have none and are Tyrants because they have none and gives no other hopes to Nations of being preserved by the Kings they set up for that end than what upon the same account may be expected from Tyrants whom all wise men have ever abhorr'd and affirmed to have bin produced to bring destruction upon the World and whose Lives have verifi'd the Sentence This is truly to depose and abolish Kings by abolishing that by which and for which they are so The greatness of their Power Riches State and the pleasures that accompany them cannot but create enemies Some will envy that which is accounted Happiness others may dislike the use they make of their Power some may be unjustly exasperated by the best of their Actions when they find themselves incommoded by them others may be too severe judges of slight miscarriages These things may reasonably temper the joys of those who delight most in the advantages of Crowns But the worst and most dangerous of all their enemies are these accursed Sycophants who by making those that ought to be the best of men like to the worst destroy their Being and by perswading the world they aim at the same things and are bound to no other rule than is common to all Tyrants give a fair pretence to ill men to say They are all of one kind And if this should be received for truth even they who think the miscarriages of their Governors may be easily redressed and desire no more would be the most fierce in procuring the destruction of that which is naught in Principle and cannot be corrected SECT XVII Kings cannot be the Interpreters of the Oaths they take OUR Author's Book is so full of absurdities and contradictions that it would be a rope of Sand if a continued series of frauds did not like a string of Poisons running through the whole give it some consistence with it self and shew it to be the work of one and the same hand After having endeavoured to subvert the Laws of God Nature and Nations most especially our own by abusing the Scriptures falsly alledging the Authority of many good Writers and seeking to obtrude upon Mankind a universal Law that would take from every Nation the right of constituting such Governments within themselves as seem most convenient for them and giving rules for the administration of such as they had established he gives us a full view of his Religion and Morals by destroying the force of the Oath taken by our Kings at their Coronation Others says he affirm that although Laws of themselves do not bind Kings yet the Oaths of Kings at their Coronation tie them to keep all the Laws of their Kingdoms How far this is true let us but examine the Oath of the Kings of England at their Coronation the words whereof are these Art thou pleased to cause to be administred in all thy judgments indifferent and upright Justice and to use discretion with Mercy and Verity Art thou pleased that our upright Laws and Customs be observed and dost thou promise that those shall be protected and maintained by thee c. To which the King answers in the Affirmative being first demanded by the Archbishop of Canterbury Pleaseth it you to confirm and observe the Laws and Customs of the antient times granted from God by just and devout Kings unto the English Nation by Oath unto the said People especially the Laws Liberties and Customs granted unto the Clergy and Laity by the famous King Edward From this he infers That the King is not to observe all Laws but such as are upright because he finds evil Laws mention'd in the Oath of Richard the
may be alledged From which we may safely conclude that if the death of one King do really invest the next Heir with the Right and Power or that he who is so invested be subject to no Law but his own Will all matters relating to that Kingdom must have bin horribly confused during the reigns of 22 Kings of Pharamonds race they can have had no rightful King from the death of Chilperic to King John and the Succession since that time is very liable to be questioned if not utterly overthrown by the house of Austria and others who by the Counts of Hapsburg derive their Descent from Pharamond and by the house of Lorrain claiming from Charles who was excluded by Capet all which is most absurd and they who pretend it bring as much confusion into their own Laws and upon the Polity of their own Nation as shame and guilt upon the memory of their Ancestors who by the most extreme injustice have rejected their natural Lord or dispossessed those who had bin in the most solemn manner placed in the Government and to whom they had generally sworn Allegiance 3. If the next Heir be actually King seized of the power by the death of his Predecessor so that there is no intermission then all the Solemnities and religious Ceremonies used at the Coronations of their Kings with the Oaths given and taken are the most profane abuses of sacred things in contempt of God and Man that can be imagined most especially if the Act be as our Author calls it voluntary and the King receiving nothing by it be bound to keep it no longer than he pleases The Prince who is to be sworn might spare the pains of watching all night in the Church fasting praying confessing communicating and swearing that he will to the utmost of his power defend the Clergy maintain the union of the Church obviate all excess rapine extortion and iniquity take care that in all judgments Justice may be observed with Equity and Mercy c. or of invoking the assistance of the Holy Ghost for the better performance of his Oath and without ceremony tell the Nobility and People that he would do what he thought fit 'T were to as little purpose for the Archbishop of Rheims to take the trouble of saying Mass delivering to him the Crown Scepter and other ensigns of Royalty explaining what is signified by them anointing him with the Oil which they say was deliver'd by an Angel to St. Remigius blessing him and praying to God to bless him if he rightly performed his Oath to God and the People and denouncing the contrary in case of failure on his part if these things conferred nothing upon him but what he had before and were of no obligation to him Such ludifications of the most sacred things are too odious and impious to be imputed to Nations that have any virtue or profess Christianity This cannot fall upon the French and Spaniards who had certainly a great zeal to Religion whatever it was and were so eminent for moral Virtues as to be a reproach to us who live in an Age of more Knowledg But their meaning is so well declared by their most solemn Acts that none but those who are wilfully ignorant can mistake One of the Councils held at Toledo declared by the Clergy Nobility and others assisting That no man should be placed in the Royal Seat till he had sworn to preserve the Church c. Another held in the same place signified to Sisinandus who was then newly crown'd That if he or any of his Successors should contrary to their Oaths and the Laws of their Country proudly and cruelly presume to exercise Domination over them he should be excommunicated and separated from Christ and them to eternal judgment The French Laws and their best Writers asserting the same things are confirmed by perpetual practice Henry of Navarr tho certainly according to their Rules and in their esteem a most accomplish'd Prince was by two General Assemblies of the Estates held at Blois deprived of the Succession for being a Protestant and notwithstanding the greatness of his Reputation Valour Victories and Affability could never be admitted till he had made himself capable of the ceremonies of his Coronation by conforming to the Religion which by the Oath he was to defend Nay this present King tho haughty enough by nature and elevated by many successes has acknowledged as he says with joy that he can do nothing contrary to Law and calls it a happy impotence in pursuance of which he has annulled many Acts of his Father and Grandfather alienating the demeasnes of the Crown as things contrary to Law and not within their power These things being confirmed by all the good Authors of that Nation Filmer finds only the worst to be fit for his turn and neither minding Law nor History takes his Maxims from a vile flattering discourse of Bellay calculated for the personal interest of Henry the fourth then King of Navarr in which he says That the Heir apparent tho furious mad a fool vicious and in all respects abominably wicked must be admitted to the Crown But Bellay was so far from attaining the ends designed by his Book that by such Doctrines which filled all men with horror he brought great prejudice to his Master and procured little favour from Henry who desired rather to recommend himself to his People as the best man they could set up than to impose a necessity upon them of taking him if he had bin the worst But our Author not contented with what this Sycophant says in relation to such Princes as are placed in the Government by a Law establishing the Succession by inheritance with an impudence peculiar to himself asserts the same right to be in any man who by any means gets into Power and imposes the same necessity of obedience upon the Subject where there is no Law as Bellay dos by virtue of one that is established 4. In the last place As Bellay acknowledges that the right belongs to Princes only where 't is established by Law I deny that there is was or ever can be any such No People is known to have bin so mad or wicked as by their own consent for their own good and for the obtaining of Justice to give the power to Beasts under whom it could never be obtain'd or if we could believe that any had bin guilty of an act so full of folly turpitude and wickedness it could not have the force of a Law and could never be put in execution for tho the rules by which the proximity should be judged be never so precise it will still be doubted whose case sutes best with them Tho the Law in some places gives private Inheritances to the next Heir and in others makes allotments according to several proportions no one knows to whom or how far the benefit shall accrue to any man till it be adjudged by a Power to which the parties
if there be any inconvenience in this 't is because they do not meet so frequently as the Law requires or by sinister means are interrupted in their sitting But nothing can be more absurd than to say that because the King dos not call Parliaments as the Law and his Oath requires that power should accrue to him which the Law and the consent of the Nation has placed in them There is also such a thing in the Law as a general or particular Pardon and the King may in some degree be entrusted with the power of giving it especially for such crimes as merely relate to himself as every man may remit the injuries done to himself but the confession of Edward the third That the Oath of the Crown had not bin kept by reason of the grant of Pardons contrary to Statutes and a new Act made that all such Charters of Pardon from henceforth granted against the Oath of the Crown and the said Statutes should be held for none demonstrates that this power was not in himself but granted by the Nation and to be executed according to such rules as the Law prescribed and the Parliament approved Moreover there having bin many and sometimes bloody contests for the Crown upon which the Nation was almost equally divided and it being difficult for them to know or even for us who have all the parties before us to judg which was the better side it was understood that he who came to be crown'd by the consent of the People was acceptable to all and the question being determined it was no way fit that he should have a liberty to make use of the publick Authority then in his hands to revenge such personal iniuries as he had or might suppose to have received which might raise new and perhaps more dangerous troubles if the Authors of them were still kept in fear of being prosecuted and nothing could be more unreasonable than that he should emplov his power to the destruction of those who had consented to make him King This made it a matter of course for a King as soon as he was crown'd to issue out a general Pardon which was no more than to declare that being now what he was not before he had no enemy upon any former account For this reason Lewis the twelfth of France when he was incited to revenge himself against those who in the reign of his Predecessor Charles the eighth had caused him to be imprisoned with great danger of his life made this answer That the King of France did not care to revenge the injuries done to the Duke of Orleans and the last King of Sweden seemed no otherwise to remember who had opposed the Queens Abdication and his Election than by conferring honours upon them because he knew they were the best men of the Nation and such as would be his friends when they should see how he would govern in which he was not deceived But lest all those who might come to the Crown of England should not have the same prudence and generosity the Kings were obliged by a Custom of no less force than a Law immediately to put an end to all disputes and the inconveniences that might arise from them This did not proceed from the bounty of the Prerogative which I think is nonsense for tho he that enjoys the Prerogative may have bounty the Prerogative can have none but from common sense from his obligation and the care of his own safety and could have no other effect in Law than what related to his person as appears by the forementioned Statute Pardon 's granted by Act of Parliament are of another nature For as the King who has no other power than by Law can no otherwise dispense with the crimes committed against the Laws than the Law dos enable him the Parliament that has the power of making Laws may intirely abolish the crimes and unquestionably remit the punishment as they please Tho some words of Aristotle's Ethicks are without any coherence shuffled together by our Author with others taken out of his Politicks I do not much except against them No Law made by man can be perfect and there must be in every Nation a power of correcting such defects as in time may arise or be discovered This power can never be so rightly placed as in the same hand that has the right of making Laws whether in one person or in many If Filmer therefore can tell us of a place where one man woman or child however he or she be qualified has the power of making Laws I will acknowledg that not only the hard Cases but as many others as he pleases are referr'd to his or her judgment and that they may give it whether they have any understanding of what they do or not whether they be drunk or sober in their senses or stark mad But as I know no such place and should not be much concerned for the sufferings of a People that should bring such misery upon themselves as must accompany an absolute dependence upon the unruly will of such a creature I may leave him to seek it and rest in a perfect assurance that he dos not speak of England which acknowledges no other Law than its own and instead of receiving any from Kings dos to this day obey none but such as have bin made by our Ancestors or our selves and never admitted any King that did not swear to observe them And if Aristotle deserve credit the power of altering mitigating explaining or correcting the Laws of England is only in the Parliament because none but the Parliament can make them SECT XXIII Aristotle proves that no man is to be entrusted with an absolute Power by shewing that no one knows how to execute it but such a man as is not to be found OUR Author having falsly cited and perverted the sense of Aristotle now brings him in saying That a perfect Kingdom is that wherein the King rules all according to his own will But tho I have read his books of Government with some attention I can find no such thing in them unless the word which signifies mere or absolute may be justly translated into perfect which is so far from Aristotle's meaning that he distinguishes the absolute or despotical Kingdoms from the Legitimate and commending the latter gives no better name than that of barbarous to the first which he says can agree only with the nature of such Nations as are base and stupid little differing from Beasts and having no skill to govern or courage to defend themselves must resign all to the will of one that will take care of them Yet even this cannot be done unless he that should take that care be wholly exempted from the vices which oblige the others to stand in need of it for otherwise 't is no better than if a Sheep should undertake to govern Sheep or a Hog to command Swine Aristotle plainly saying That as men are by nature
his Son gave them occasion to resume If this was commendable in them it must be so in other Nations If the Germans might preserve their Liberty as well as the Parthians submit themselves to absolute Monarchy 't is as lawful for the descendents of those Germans to continue in it as for the Eastern Nations to be slaves If one Nation may justly chuse the Government that seems best to them and continue or alter it according to the changes of times and things the same right must belong to others The great variety of Laws that are or have bin in the world proceeds from this and nothing can better shew the wisdom and virtue or the vices and folly of Nations than the use they make of this right they have bin glorious or infamous powerful or despicable happy or miserable as they have well or ill executed it If it be said that the Law given by God to the Hebrews proceeding from his wisdom and goodness must needs be perfect and obligatory to all Nations I answer that there is a simple and a relative perfection the first is only in God the other in the things he has created He saw that they were good which can signify no more than that they were good in their kind and suted to the end for which he designed them For if the perfection were absolute there could be no difference between an Angel and a Worm and nothing could be subject to change or death for that is imperfection This relative perfection is seen also by his Law given to mankind in the persons of Adam and Noah It was good in the kind fit for those times but could never have bin enlarged or altered if the perfection had bin simple and no better evidence can be given to shew that it was not so than that God did asterwards give one much more full and explicit to his People This Law also was peculiarly applicable to that People and season for if it had bin otherwise the Apostles would have obliged Christians to the intire observation of it as well as to abstain from idolatry fornication and blood But if all this be not so then their judicial Law and the form of their Commonwealth must be received by all no human Law can be of any value we are all Brethren no man has a prerogative above another Lands must be equally divided amongst all Inheritances cannot be alienated for above fifty years no man can be raised above the rest unless he be called by God and enabled by his Spirit to conduct the People when this man dies he that has the same Spirit must succeed as Joshua did to Moses and his Children can have no title to his Office when such a man appears a Sanhedrim of seventy men chosen out of the whole People are to judg such causes as relate to themselves whilst those of greater extent and importance are referred to the General Assemblies Here is no mention of a King and consequently if we must take this Law for our pattern we cannot have one If the point be driven to the utmost and the precept of Deuteronomy where God permitted them to have a King if they thought fit when they came into the promised Land be understood to extend to all Nations every one of them must have the same liberty of taking their own time chusing him in their own way dividing the Kingdom having no King and setting up other Governors when they please as before the Election of Saul and after the return from the Captivity and even when they have a King he must be such a one as is describ'd in the same Chapter who no more resembles the Soveraign Majesty that our Author adores and agrees as little with his Maxims as a Tribun of the Roman People We may therefore conclude that if we are to follow the Law of Moses we must take it with all the appendages a King can be no more and no otherwise than he makes him for whatever we read of the Kings they had were extreme deviations from it No Nation can make any Law and our Lawyers burning their Books may betake themselves to the study of the Pentateuch in which tho some of them may be well versed yet probably the profit arising from thence will not be very great But if we are not obliged to live in a conformity to the Law of Moses every People may frame Laws for themselves and we cannot be denied the right that is common to all Our Laws were not sent from Heaven but made by our Ancestors according to the light they had and their present occasions We inherit the same right from them and as we may without vanity say that we know a little more than they did if we find our selves prejudic'd by any Law that they made we may repeal it The safety of the People was their supreme Law and is so to us neither can we be thought less fit to judg what conduces to that end than they were If they in any Age had bin perswaded to put themselves under the power or in our Author's phrase under the sovereign Majesty of a child a fool a mad or desperately wicked person and had annexed the right conferred upon him to such as should succeed it had not bin a just and right Sanction and having none of the qualities essentially belonging to a Law could not have the effect of a Law It cannot be for the good of a People to be governed by one who by nature ought to be governed or by age or accident is rendred unable to govern himself The publick interests and the concernments of private men in their lands goods liberties and lives for the preservation of which our Author says that regal Prerogative is only constituted cannot be preserved by one who is transported by his own passions or follies a slave to his lusts and vices or which is sometimes worse governed by the vilest of men and women who flatter him in them and push him on to do such things as even they would abhor if they were in his place The turpitude and impious madness of such an act must necessarily make it void by overthrowing the ends for which it was made since that justice which was sought cannot be obtain'd nor the evils that were fear'd prevented and they for whose good it was intended must necessarily have a right of abolishing it This might be sufficient for us tho our Ancestors had enslaved themselves But God be thanked we are not put to that trouble We have no reason to believe we are descended from such fools and beasts as would willingly cast themselves and us into such an excess of misery and shame or that they were so tame and cowardly to be subjected by force or fear We know the value they set upon their Liberties and the courage with which they defended them and we can have no better example to incourage us never to suffer them to be violated or diminished
manifest this by the words Be it enacted by the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons in Parliament assembled and by Authority of the same But King James says Filmer in his Law of free Monarchy affirms the contrary and it may be so yet that is nothing to us No man doubts that he desired it might be so in England but it dos not from thence appear that it is so The Law of a free Monarchy is nothing to us for that Monarchy is not free which is regulated by a Law not to be broken without the guilt of Perjury as he himself confessed in relation to ours As to the words cited from Hooker I can find no hurt in them To draw up the form of a good Law is a matter of invention and judgment but it receives the force of a Law from the power that enacts it We have no other reason for the paiment of Excise or Customs than that the Parliament has granted those Revenues to the King to defray the publick Charges Whatever therefore King James was pleased to say in his Books or in those written for him we do not so much as know that the killing of a King is Treason or to be punished with death otherwise than as it is enacted by Parliament and it was not always so for in the time of Ethelstan the Estimates of Lives were agreed in Parliament and that of a King valued at thirty thousand Thrymsae And if that Law had not bin alter'd by the Parliament it must have bin in force at this day It had bin in vain for a King to say he would have it otherwise for he is not created to make Laws but to govern according to such as are made and sworn to assent to such as shall be proposed He who thinks the Crown not worth accepting on these conditions may refuse it The words Le Roy le veult are only a pattern of the French fashions upon which some Kings have laid great stress and would no doubt have bin glad to introduce Car tel est nostre plaisir but that may prove a difficult matter Nay in France it self where that Stile and all the ranting expressions that please the vainest of men are in mode no Edict has the power of a Law till it be registred in Parliament This is not a mere ceremony as some pretend but all that is essential to a Law Nothing has bin more common than for those Parliaments to refuse Edicts sent to them by the King When John Chastel had at the instigation of the Jesuits stabb'd Henry the fourth in the Mouth and that Order had designed or executed many other execrable crimes they were banished out of the Kingdom by an Arrest of the Parliament of Paris Some other Parliaments registred the same but those of Tholouse and Bordeaux absolutely refused and notwithstanding all that the King could do the Jesuits continued at Tournon and many other places within their Precincts till the Arrest was revoked These proceedings are so displeasing to the Court that the most violent ways have bin often used to abolish them About the year 1650 Seguier then Chancellor of France was sent with a great number of Soldiers to oblige the Parliament of Paris to pass some Edicts upon which they had hesitated but he was so far from accomplishing his design that the People rose against him and he thought himself happy that he escaped with his Life If the Parliaments do not in all parts of the Kingdom continue in the Liberty of approving or rejecting all Edicts the Law is not altered but oppressed by the violence of the Sword And the Prince of Condé who was principally employ'd to do that work may as I suppose have had leisure to reflect upon those Actions and cannot but find reason to conclude that his excellent valour and conduct was used in a most noble exploit equally beneficial to his Country and himself However those who are skilled in the Laws of that Nation do still affirm that all publick Acts which are not duly examined and registred are void in themselves and can be of no force longer than the miserable People lies under the violence of Oppression which is all that could reasonably be said if a Pirat had the same power over them But whether the French have willingly offer'd their ears to be bor'd or have bin subdued by force it concerns us not Our Liberties depend not upon their will virtue or fortune how wretched and shameful soever their Slavery may be the evil is only to themselves We are to consider no human Laws but our own and if we have the spirit of our Ancestors we shall maintain them and die as free as they left us Le Roy le veut tho written in great Letters or pronounced in the most tragical manner can signify no more than that the King in performance of his Oath dos assent to such Laws as the Lords and Commons have agreed Without prejudice to themselves and their Liberties a People may suffer the King to advise with his Council upon what they propose Two eyes see more than one and human judgment is subject to errors Tho the Parliament consist of the most eminent men of the Nation yet when they intend good they may be mistaken They may sefely put a check upon themselves that they may farther consider the most important matters and correct the errors that may have bin committed if the King's Council do discover them but he can speak only by the advice of his Council and every man of them is with his head to answer for the advices he gives If the Parliament has not bin satisfied with the reasons given against any Law that they offer'd it has frequently pass'd and if they have bin satisfied 't was not the King but they that laid it aside He that is of another opinion may try whether Le Roy le veut can give the force of a Law to any thing conceived by the King his Council or any other than the Parliament But if no wise man will affirm that he can do it or deny that by his Oath he is obliged to assent to those that come from them he can neither have the Legislative power in himself nor any other part in it than what is necessarily to be performed by him as the Law prescribes I know not what our Author means by saying Le Roy le veut is the interpretative phrase pronounced at the passing of every Act of Parliament For if there be difficulty in any of them those words do no way remove it But the following part of the paragraph better deserves to be observed It was says he the antient custom for á long time until the days of Henry the fifth for the Kings when any Bill was brought to them that had passed both Houses to take and pick out what they liked not and so much as they chose was enacted as a Law But the custom of the
In the other by the Parliament which being the representative body of the People and the collected wisdom of the Nation is least subject to error most exempted from passion and most free from corruption their own good both publick and private depending upon the rectitude of their Sanctions Thev cannot do any thing that is ill without damage to themselves and their posterity which being all that can be done by human understanding our Lives Liberties and Properties are by our Laws directed to depend upon them SECT XLIII Proclamations are not Laws Our Author according to his usual method and integrity lays great weight upon Proclamations as the significations of the King's pleasure which in his opinion is our only Law But neither Law nor Reason openly directing nor by consequences insinuating that such a Power should be put into an uncertain or suspected hand we may safely deny them to be Laws or in any sense to have the effect of Laws Nay they cannot be so much as significations of his will for as he is King he can have no will but as the Law directs If he depart from the Law he is no longer King and his will is nothing to us Proclamations at most are but temporary by the advice of Council in pursuance of the Law If they be not so the Subject is no way obliged to obey them and the Counsellors are to be punished for them These Laws are either immemorial Customs or Statutes The first have their beginning and continuance from the universal consent of the Nation The latter receive their Authority and Force of Laws from Parliaments as is frequently expressed in the Preambles These are under God the best defence of our Lives Liberties and Estates they proceed not from the blind corrupt and fluctuating humor of a man but from the mature deliberation of the choicest Persons of the Nation and such as have the greatest interest in it Our Ancestors have always relied upon these Laws and 't is to be hoped we shall not be so abandoned by God so deprived of courage and common sense to suffer our selves to be cheated of the Inheritance which they have so frequently so bravely and so constantly defended Tho experience has too well taught us that Parliaments may have their failings and that the Vices which are industriously spread amongst them may be too prevalent yet they are the best helps we have and we may much more reasonably depend upon them than upon those who propagate that corruption among them for which only they can deserve to be suspected We hope they will take care of our concernments since they are as other men so soon as a Session is ended and can do nothing to our prejudice that will not equally affect them and their posterity besides the guilt of betraying their Country which can never be washed off If some should prove false to their trust 't is probable that others would continue in their integrity Or if the base arts which are usually practised by those who endeavour to delude corrupt enslave and ruin Nations should happen to prevail upon the youngest and weakest it may be reasonably hoped that the wisest will see the snares and instruct their companions to avoid them But if all things were so put into the hands of one man that his Proclamations were to be esteemed Laws the Nation would be exposed to ruin as soon as it should chance to fall into an ill hand 'T is in vain to say we have a good King who will not make an ill use of his power for even the best are subject to be deceived by flatterers and Crown'd heads are almost ever encompassed by them The principal art of a Courtier is to observe his Master's passions and to attack him on that side where he seems to be most weak It would be a strange thing to find a man impregnable in every part and if he be not 't is impossible he should resist all the attempts that are made upon him If his Judgment come to be prepossess'd he and all that depend on him are lost Contradictions tho never so just are then unsafe and no man will venture upon them but he who dares sacrifice himself for the publick good The nature of man is frail and stands in need of assistance Virtuous actions that are profitable to a Commonwealth ought to be made as far as it is possible safe easy and advantageous and 't is the utmost imprudence to tempt men to be enemies to the publick by making the most pernicious actions to be the means of obtaining honour and favour whilst no man can serve his Country but with the ruin of himself and his family However in this case the question is not concerning a person the same Counsels are to be follow'd when Moses or Samuel is in the Throne as if Caligula had invaded it Laws ought to aim at perpetuity but the Virtues of a man die with him and very often before him Those who have deserved the highest praises for wisdom and integrity have frequently left the honors they enjoyed to foolish and vicious children If virtue may in any respect be said to outlive the person it can only be when good men frame such Laws and Constitutions as by favouring it preserve themselves This has never bin done otherwise than by balancing the Powers in such a manner that the corruption which one or a few men might fall into should not be suffer'd to spread the contagion to the ruin of the whole The long continuance of Lycurgus his Laws is to be attributed to this They restrained the lusts of Kings and reduced those to order who adventured to transgress them Whereas the whole fabrick must have fallen to the ground in a short time if the first that had a fancy to be absolute had bin able to effect his design This has bin the fate of all Governments that were made to depend upon the virtue of a man which never continues long in any family and when that fails all is lost The Nations therefore that are so happy to have good Kings ought to make a right use of them by establishing the good that may outlast their lives Those of them that are good will readily join in this work and take care that their Successors may be obliged in doing the like to be equally beneficial to their own families and the people they govern If the rulers of Nations be restrained not only the people is by that means secured from the mischiefs of their vices and follies but they themselves are preserved from the greatest temptations to ill and the terrible effects of the vengeance that frequently ensues upon it An unlimited Prince might be justly compared to a weak ship exposed to a violent storm with a vast Sail and no Rudder We have an eminent example of this in the book of Esther A wicked Villain having filled the ears of a foolish King with false stories of the Jews he issues out
a Proclamation for their utter extirpation and not long after being informed of the truth he gave them leave by another Proclamation to kill whom they pleased which they executed upon seventy thousand men The Books of Ezra Nehemiah and Daniel manifestly discover the like fluctuation in all the Counsels of Nabuchodonosor Cyrus Darius and Artaxerxes When good men had credit with them they favour'd the Israelites sent them back to their own Country restored the sacred Vessels that had bin taken away gave them all things necessary for the rebuilding of the City and advanced the chief of them to the highest employments But if they fell into ill hands three just men must be thrown into the burning Furnace sor refusing to worship an Idol Daniel must be cast to the Lions the holy City esteemed rebellious and those who endeavoured to rebuild it enemies to Kings Such was the state of things when their Proclamations passed for Laws and numbers of flattering slaves were ready to execute their commands without examining whether they were just or unjust good or bad The life and death of the best men together with the very being of Nations was exposed to chance and they were either preserved or destroyed according to the humor of that man who spoke last to the King or happened to have credit with him If a frantick fancy come into the head of a drunken whore Persepolis must be burnt and the hand of Alexander is ready to execute her will If a dancing wench please Herod the most venerable of all human heads must be offered in a dish for a sacrifice to the rage of her impure mother The nature of man is so frail that wheresoever the word of a single Person has had the force of a Law the innumerable extravagances and mischiefs it has produced have bin so notorious that all Nations who are not stupid slavish and brutish have always abominated it and made it their principal care to find out remedies against it by so dividing and balancing the powers of their Government that one or a few men might not be able to oppress and destroy those they ought to preserve and protect This has always bin as grateful to the best and wisest Princes as necessary to the weakest and worst as I have proved already by the examples of Theopompus Moses and many others These considerations have given beginning growth and continuance to all the mixed Governments that have bin in the world and I may justly say there never was a good one that was not mixed If other proofs of their rectitude were wanting our Author's hatred would be enough to justify them He is so bitter an enemy to mankind as to be displeased with nothing but that which tends to their good and so perverse in his judgment that we have reason to believe that to be good which he most abhors One would think he had taken the model of the Government he proposes from the monstrous Tyranny of Ceylon an Island in the East-Indies where the King knows no other Law than his own will He kills tears in pieces empales or throws to his Elephants whomsoever he pleases No man has any thing that he can call his own He seldom fails to destroy those who have bin employ'd in his domestick Service or publick Offices and few obtain the favour of being put to death and thrown to the dogs without torments His Subjects approach him no otherwise than on their knees licking the dust and dare assume to themselves no other name than that of dogs or limbs of dogs This is a true pattern of Filmer's Patriarchical Monarch His Majesty as I suppose is sufficiently exalted for he dos whatever he pleases The exercise of his power is as gentle as can reasonably be expected from one who has all by the unquestionable right of usurpation and knows the people will no longer suffer him and the Villains he hires to be the instruments of his cruelty than they can be kept in such ignorance weakness and baseness as neither to know how to provide for themselves or dare to resist him We ought to esteem our selves happy if the like could be established among us and are much obliged to our Author for so kindly proposing an expedient that might terminate all our disputes Let Proclamations obtain the power of Laws and the business is done They may be so ingeniously contrived that the antient Laws which we and our Fathers have highly valued shall be abolished or made a snare to all those that dare remember they are Englishmen and are guilty of the unpardonable crime of loving their Country or have the courage conduct and reputation requir'd to defend it This is the sum of Filmer's Philosophy and this is the Legacy he has left to testify his affection to the Nation which having for a long time lain unregarded has bin lately brought into the light again as an introduction of a Popish Successor who is to be established as we ought to believe for the security of the Protestant Religion and our English Liberties Both will undoubtedly flourish under a Prince who is made to believe the Kingdom is his Patrimony that his Will is a Law and that he has a Power which none may resist If any man doubt whether he will make a good use of it he may only examine the Histories of what others in the same circumstances have done in all places where they have had power The principles of that Religion are so full of meekness and charity the Popes have always shew'd themselves so gentle towards those who would not submit to their Authority the Jesuits who may be accounted the Soul that gives life to the whole body of that Faction are so well natur'd faithful and exact in their morals so full of innocence justice and truth that no violence is to be fear'd from such as are govern'd by them The fatherly care shew'd to the Protestants of France by the five last Kings of the House of Valois the mercy of Philip the second of Spain to his Pagan Subjects in the West-Indies and the more hated Protestants in the Netherlands the moderation of the Dukes of Savoy towards the Vaudois in the Marquisat of Saluzzo and the Vallies of Piedmont the gentleness and faith of the two Maries Queens of England and Scotland the kindness of the Papists to the Protestants of Ireland in the year 1641 with what we have reason to believe they did and do still intend if they can accomplish the ends of their Conspiracy In a word the sweetness and Apostolical meekness of the Inquisition may sufficiently convince us that nothing is to be feared where that principle reigns We may suffer the word of such a Prince to be a Law and the people to be made to believe it ought to be so when he is expected Tho we should wave the Bill of Exclusion and not only admit him to reign as other Kings have done but resign the whole power into