people or who after he had got into the Throne obtained the submissions of the People The same reason admits an Alien born though he be estranged from us by his Birth Est in Juvencis est in equis patrum vertus Though what I have said in this matter is so obvious that no considering man can escape these thoughts yet I cannot think it impertinent to add it here to clear what I have laid down in the precedent Sheets as an undoubted truth and evident in it self That the Succession to the Crown is the peoples Right But there is nothing I perceive to be allowed clear and evident when we live in an Age wherein Fools and most ignorant persons will undertake by the Liberty of the Press to print and publish to the world their crude thoughts and with great assurance offer their uncouth Opinions with astonishing presumption Besides to the reasonableness of this Doctrine it is agreeable to the Illustrious Grotius De Jure Belli Pacis Lib. 2. cap. 7. And nothing follows from his collected Law-cases about the different Rules of Succession of the Crown from private Fees but that he is a very young Lawyer or an old senseless Jobber of Law-Cases But I hope that all men that read him will with resentment think themselves used with scorn when they see what frivolous Fellows attempt upon them to deceive them and will be fully convinced that the Bill is reasonable just and fit since they have nothing better to object against it The last endeavour of the Epistoler is to remove the Authority of Parliaments and the Act made in the Thirteenth of Queen Elizabeth The words of which are printed at the close of the Papers against the man of Great and Weighty Considerations Our case is not in its reasons unparallel to those that introduced that Law and occasioned the making of that Declaration but whatever was the particular Reason the Declaration of that Parliament in that Act is general and therefore it is an Authority not to be impeached to prove that there is such a power to alter the Succession of the Crown for great Ends and weighty Reasons and just Causes Besides that such a power is lodged in the Parliament is clearly proved by us from the nature of Government in the foregoing Sheets As also that such a power will not be abused by using it in this Bill of Exclusion of which I hope no body upon the reading of them will retain any longer any manner of doubt But I cannot before I have done but take notice of his little Artifice in that he doth suggest that by the Act of Parliament of the Thirteenth of Queen Elizabeth cap 1. the Title of the Family of Stuarts is excluded when it is evident by the words of the Act that the Disability there enacted is only personal And his story of Monsieur the Duke of Anjou designing then to marry the Queen is a false and malicious insinuation to hurt the memory of that excellent Princess And consequently that King James and his Race had and have notwithstanding the validity of that Act a good Title to the Crown And that the validity of that Act may be maintained without derogation and injury to his Majesties sacred Title whom God long preserve A short Historical Collection touching the SUCCESSION of the CROWN WHether the History of the Succession of the Crown will allow so good and clear an Hereditary Right Jure humano as we have yielded in the precedent discourse the Reader will best judge by the short Historical Collection touching the Succession hereto subjoyned In the Heptarchy there was no fit Hereditary Right one King tripping up the heels of another as he had power till one got all After that Alfred Bastard-son to Oswin Adelstane Bastard-son of Edward the Elder Edmund Surnamed the Martyr Bastard-son to King Edgar Harold Surnamed Harefoot Bastard-son to Canute wore the Imperial Crown of England But a Law was made under the Saxon Monarchy De Oodinatione Regum directing the Election of Kings and prohibiting Bastards to be chosen Edward the Confessor was no King Jure Haereditario but the right was most indisputable at first in Edward Son of Edmond Ironside Father to Edgar Etheling his Nephew during his life and after his decease in that Edgar who was Nephew also to the Confessor William the First called the Conquerour was a Bastard and had no right but from his Sword and the Peoples Suhmissions and their Electing him William Rufus was elected against the right of his Elder Brother Robert then living Henry the First was made King favenle Clero Populo his Brother Robert still living whose Eyes were after put out at Cardiss-Castle in Wales King Stephen was elected a Clero Populo and confirmed by the Pope and Maud Daughter of Henry the First excluded Henry the Second came in by consent yet he had no Hereditary right for his Mother Maud the Empress Daughter and Heir to Henry the First was then living King John had an elder Brother Jeoffery Earl of Brittany who had Issue Arthur and Elianor which ought to have succeeded before him but he Arthur his Eldest Brother's Son living was elected a Clero Populo and being divorced from his Wife by his new Queen had Henry the Third Henry the Third was confirmed and setled in the Kingdom by the general Election of the people Elianor Daughter to Jeoffery the elder Brother still living Roger Mortimer Earl of March Son of Edmund by Philippa Daughter and Heir of Lionel Duke Clarence a younger Son of Edward the Third was in the Parliament 9 R. 2. declared Heir Apparent of the Crown which could not be but by force of an Act of Parliament Henry the Fourth came to the Crown by way of Election and in his time viz. in the eighth year of his Reign was the first Act of Parliament made for Entailing the Crown with Remainders By vertue of which his Son Henry the Fifth became King and after him Henry the Sixth In Henry the Sixth his time Richard Duke of York claimed the Crown and an Act of Parliament was made 39 H. 6. that Henry the Sixth should enjoy the Crown for his life and the said Duke and his Heirs after him After which King Henry raises an Army by the assistance of the Queen and Prince and at Wakefield in Battle kills the Duke for which 1 Edw. 4. they were all by Act of Parliament attainted of Treason and one principal reason thereof was for that the Duke being declared Heir to the Crown after Henry by Act of Parliament they had kill'd him which Act of Attainder was 1 H. 7. repealed and the Blood of the King Queen and Prince restored in terms of disgrace and detestation of so barbarous an Attainder Rot. Palr Anno 1 H. 7. Edward the Fourth succeeds upon the death of H. 6. by vertue of an Act of Parliament made in the time of H. 6. for entailing the Crown as Son
Act of Parliament in Scotland for the Recognition of the unalterableness of the Descent of the Crown and his Book accounted unanswerable and the whole Cause by the Asserters of this Doctrine put upon the force and consequence of his Reasonings And indeed I have seen nothing so considerable made publick and offered to the World for the defence of the unalterable Right of the Descent of the Crown as are the reasons of these two Books which we have considered in these following Discourses To the end that the reasons against the Bill of Exclusion as well as the reasons for it being duly examined together no honest man may from a doubtful Conscience be any longer under a necessity of suffering the Mischiefs of a Popish Successour which will be more intolerable when they come to be felt than any imagination can suggest or any words can express True it is the Most cannot consider duly of a Matter and determine upon it by their own proper Reasonings and Discoursings and yet they have so much reason as to think That where Doctors differ they have respectively their reasons for their different opinions though they themselves do not apprehend them and consequently at least doubt and of what they doubt they conclude unlawful Yet even the Most may judge what weight and moment the reasons and arguments upon which each party ground their Conclusions are of if they are truly clearly and nakedly propounded reflected upon and made fit for their Judgment and Capacity and they may thereby be brought to discharge their doubt and determine with clear satisfaction in any matter so discussed if they will honestly and duly consider I perswade my self I have by the reflections I have made upon the Discourses of these two renowned Authors prepared their Reasonings for the judgment of the ordinary sort of men if honest To such their Arguments must appear so frivolous as they will conclude these Authors downright Advocates for the Popish Superstition and Cruelty under the thin pretences of defending That a Successour to the Crown by an ordinary and common right cannot be Excluded by an Act of State Such a Successour who if he be not a Papist yet hath openly departed from our Church in which he was born and for which his Father suffered Martyrdome and for the preserving the Peace of Three Kingdoms disdains to tell us he is a Protestant and neglects the direful Imprecations of his Grand-Father though no Curses are so operative as those of Parents upon their Children upon weighty causes solemnly pronounced These can kill at the Root the most flourishing and prolifical Families make their Root rottenness and their Blossom to go up as dust Omnem vastant stirpemque domumque 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And therefore I have caused these reflections to be Reprinted if happily they may conduce any thing towards a full information of my doubting honest Countrymen in a matter so weighty and consequently towards the prevention of the effusions of English Blood in Wars Massacres and Martyrdomes and of the lawless violent and bloody attempts to be made for the Extirpation of the Reformed Religion Establisht amongst us by Law by the Romanists And lastly towards the re-establishment of our Government and Nation in Peace and Tranquillity again which are now most miserably distracted by the fears of a Popish Successour and by the Doubts about Excluding him If we did not doubt without reason of the lawfulness of Excluding a Popish Successour we should have no reason to fear him The Great and Weighty CONSIDERATIONS c. CONSIDERED WHatever is the subject matter upon which we exercise our thoughts or whereupon we make our Enquities doth not make the Considerations of slight and vain Men GREAT and WEIGHTY A man of slender Endowments doth not commence to be Wise as soon as matters of great Moment take up his Thoughts But if he be of such a make as renders him capable of being in any degree wise he is affected with an ingenuous Shame finding the matters too hard for his Capacity and above his reach He is displeased and dissatisfied with his own dark indistinct and confused Conceptions in which he himself can receive no satisfaction he suspends and determines nothing but that he doth not understand the matter and resorts with deference to those who are wiser than himself But there is a sort of Arrogant Fools who trouble the World make it difficult to understand plain Truth confound the Notions of things blend things of remote distances in their nature together or put one thing for another that have no affinity to each other puzzle and perplex the minds of the Weak These deserve the Indignation of the better sort of Judgments who cannot but be empassioned while they see a great part of mankind abused to their hurt By the villanous practices of some designed to the endurance of the greatest mischiefs and by a sort of silly Knaves attempted upon for deceiving them into a permission of all the pretended evils to come upon them who presumptuously use their little Wit to ensnare the Consciences to perplex the Minds of the Multitude by Objections puzzling to the weak by such Reasonings as none but fools could think of and none but bold Knaves would offer to the World Such I take to be every immodest man who will adventure not from his Understanding and therefore from his Will and consequently his Interest to speak things that have no consequence and are not induc'd by the Laws of Reasoning and Discourse that have a tendency to dispose men to scruple of Conscience and make them doubtful and unactive against the evils of the greatest size that are design'd against them and to neglect or resist the Counsels of God against themselves and fatally fall under the designed evils notwithstanding they are provided of a just and allowable Remedy against them There are and ever was and ever will be to the trouble of Mankind a sort of literate Fools who will always obtain some reputation with the stupid admiring Vulgar made by Nature to little Understanding and who have lost that little for want of using it who by Books good of bad it matters not much become greater Fools than they could have been if left to simple Nature who by imperfect remembrances and undue joyning of things more imperfectly understood make most perverse Judgments in all things they are conversant about And if it happen that by their Complexion they prove forward and are opinionated of their false Learning they obtrude upon the World their unnatural monstrous and incoherent Conceptions And if they chance to mix their Discourses with passages of Holy Scriptures and thereby entitled Religion to their Absurdities they more powerfully amuse distract and abuse the Consciences of the common People and perplex them with Scruples and Prejudices and that sometimes against the only means of their preservation And this calls upon and urgeth the Charity of such to whom God hath given a better
proceeding upon evident notoriety to exclude one that designs the subverting of it and the destruction of those that are to be governed and protected and hath incurr'd a severer Doom I well hope there are very few in this Nation so ill instructed that doth not think it in the Power of the People to depose a Prince who really undertakes to alienate his Kingdom or to give it up into the hands of another Soveraign Power Or that really acts the Destruction or the Universal Calamity of his People The Learned and Judicious Mr. Falkner than whom there is no person of this Age with the Church of England in greater esteem Who truly merits the high esteem of all men for his excellent Candour and Learning In his Book called Christian Loyalty cannot deny the right to be so upon those cases really happening but is not willing to suppose such Cases can ever happen in Fact He tells us If any such strange Case as is proposed should really happen in the World it would have its great difficulties Grotius he tells us thinks that in this utmost extremity the use of such defence as a last refuge ultimo necessitatis proesidio is not to be condemned provided the care of the common Good be preserved And if this be true saith he it must be upon this Ground that such attempts of ruining do ipso facto include a disclaiming the Governing these persons as Subjects and conseqently of being their Prince and King and then notwithstanding his Proposition saith he would remain True viz. That it is not lawful upon any pretence whatsoever to take Arms against the King All that Mr. Falkner offers in this matter out of his commendable Care and Zeal to Peace and Government is to argue the Cases in Fact impossible and that such suppositions may be the undue imputations of Factious persons against their Soveraign He thinks that Princes may have a Consideration of the Account they must give in the other World of their Government here That they have a regard to their Honour and Esteem and a Respect to their Safety To the quiet and serenity of their own minds and will avoid the Diroe Vltrices and the Tortures of mind that attend Cruelty and the Actors of great mischief and by such Considerations as these be contain'd in their Duty But do these Arguments of his that should reasonably and ordinarily do secure us against the Oppressions of Potentates give us in this juncture any Security are these Considerations Disswasives or Incitements to a Popish Prince to act our Fears and give reality to the Suppositions To any under the Principles and Counsels that guide such a Prince already entred upon the Design and his party obnoxious these Considerations would urge him to proceed and make our Calamity certain These Arguments of his applyed to such a state of things is like a Protestatio contra factum and like the Sophistical Arguments of the Stoicks who would undertake to prove a thing acknowledged and existent and present to be impossible How wild then and transported must this Patriot seem who will undertake to argue the Bill guilty of the highest Iniquity and Injustice Arraign the greatest and Best part of the Nation adjure them to answer it at his Tribunal challenge us for so his Expostulations and Enquiries of us doth import with intentions to over-reach Providence and that we despair of the justness of our Cause or the goodness of God And he tells us That God doth not want our Wickedness to fulfil his Holy Will We answer How far the Providence of God will assist us in this undertaking we know not it is not new in the world for the most Righteous Causes to be unprosperous we are only to do our Duty and leave the Issue and Event thereof to his All-Wise Providence But we know and are most assured of the Justness of the undertaking and we have a good hope in the goodness of God that he will succeed it for that herein we are doing nothing that is evil but fulfilling his Holy and Good Will I mean not that we are certain to obtain what we desire and pursue But it is the will of God concerning us who hath left us in the hands of our own Counsel and hath not told us That he will save us by a Miracle that we should be Loyal to our Soveraign zealously love that excellent Religion and that excellent Government that his Gracious Providence hath established amongst us by Law And also that we desire and endeavour by Law to disable in the understanding of the representative of the Nation a profest Enemy both to our Religion and Government from getting into the Throne that he be not by that advantage of Power enabled to effect his purpose But we are resolved we that will not call that Design Evil tho' it do not succeed nor think that we are not doing the Holy Will of God tho' we should be unprosperous therein and without success If there was an Oracle to Consult we would not know what the Success should be lest our Virtue should lose its Glory No brave man but would despise all Auguries when he is to contend for his Country and things more precious to him than his Life Sortilegis egeant dubij This false Patriot takes Sanctuary in his Revolt from publick Interest and he thinks he is swimming to Shore with his Plank before a Wreck and will fly the Danger before it approaches but we will do our Duty weather the Storm secure of the event for the goodness of the Cause makes us hopeful and we will Triumph in our Integrity tho' disappointed Of any other Will of God save what is his Will for us to do as Citizens Souldiers or Martyrs we are not so sollicitous to know The Noble Roman when advised by his Friend Labienus to Consult the Oracle of Jupiter Ammon as to the event of the War in which he was then engaged Thus answered him Quid Quaeri Labiene Jubes an liber in armis Occubuisse velim potius quam Regna videre An noceat vis ulla bono fortunaque perdat Opposita virtute minus Laudandaque velle Sit satis Et nunquam successu crescit Honestum Scimus haec nobis non altius inseret Ammon I do but right to my Country-men to bear my publick Testimony that their generous and godly Resolutions are agreeable to this Noble Roman But that done I will calmly tell him That we are in a Legal method allowed by the Government contending for its preservation by the Bill of Exclusion and that most certainly he can have no right against a Law for such it will be when that Bill hath the Royal Assent to any thing that he shall forfeit thereby And whether such a Law is not most righteous let God Angels and Men Judge And here it will not be amiss to admonish this Patriot That no man hath a Right to any thing from God and Nature to use his
so long in animadverting upon this last passage but that I think our Considerer hath taken into his assistance in these Considerations some Divine by his abounding so much in Scriptural Allegations And that hereby you may see the Size of the rest of the men of that Order that are Chaplains to the Cause of the Succession and that they ought to be of little regard in this matter as they deserve none it being not in their way though in matters that belong properly to their Function they may deserve much who are of the meanest of that Order Our Gentleman next proceeds to his political Arguments but those can be answered I perswade my self by every man who hath heard of the Plot. Though a man of his Size may frame puzzling Arguments that may perplex mens Minds with scruples and doubts which a Fool may do and a Wise man cannot remove yet it is scarce possible for him to deprive men of their Senses and make them insensible to all the Evils that they hear see and feel and justly fear If the Protestants are not as he saith very strong abroad we have reason to be more united at home and united by the awful Authority of a Law If we are threatned with a great power of the Roman Religion from abroad which he affrights us with we have no reason to retain the biggest power to hurt us within our own Bowels But if it be in the power of such bad men as this Pretender to divide by slights and wiles the good People of England and keep them from uniting in the onely means of their safety we must perish But Wo be to them by whom we are thus destroyed His last effort upon the minds of the People is to intimidate them that by their fears they may fall under the evils they design upon us he scatters his menaces as if he were in the place of God against us and as if he had the executing of the Plot in his Power and tells us of sins that fit us for ruine It is convenient to these Plotters to imagine us mighty wicked that they may believe we deserve the Vengeance they design Our Government it self our Laws our Religion must become wicked when they arrive to a probable power to hurt us They never contrive a Gunpowder Plot a Massacre or burning a City but they dream the iniquity of the People is grown ripe They would turn us into Sodom and Gomorrha which this Considerer frights us with if they could call for Fire from Heaven and then publish us to all the world if we were much better than we are to be as wicked as the Cities of the Plain If we cannot obtain this Bill I shall then begin to think that the Decree is gone forth and our Fate is approaching and that God will let these Villains have their will over us By Gods displeasure not theirs I shall take the true measures of our Sins His displeasure will be remarkable and evident if he seems to deny us the means of our Safety and Preservation and which is the onely means of the Kings Salvation from their Traiterous design If this Bill do not pass they will take him for a wicked King too and they will say he hath no lawful Issue to succeed him for his own sins though our Considerer saith at present that our Sins are the cause of it and many other remarks of wickedness they will make upon him when they find it convenient and for their interest to destroy him at best he will be then but Tenant at Will to them of his Life as well as his Crown which this Considerer most slanderously chargeth to be designed by us but if he will follow the counsel of that excellent Bill he may live long and see good days and peace upon our Israel to which let all good people say AMEN I shall onely remark two or three things in the close of the Paper of Weighty Considerations First that he undertakes to say and affirm that the King is as much subject to the Power of the Parliament as the Duke which doth dethrone the King himself and lessens him to the degree of a Subject Secondly that in this his Address he perswades the King to rend the Government to lay aside the Commons of England and abandon them as Rebels to divide from them and govern by a House of Lords and Privy Council And thirdly that the most venerable and Loyal Parliament that ever was conven'd in this Nation though not so clearly purged from the corrupt Villains of the late long Parliament as the next we hope will be are charged by him to follow the Anarchical Encroachments of the Factions in the Rump-Parliament by which he insinuates that we must become Papists admit of a Popish Successor or be used as Rebels and Traitors by these three Remarks it is evident what Principles and Designs these men are of that oppose the Dukes Bill and from thence you may find reason to assist it and promote it with the greatest unanimity and resolution and the rather for that the Duke himself cannot want Considerations to dispose him to approve of it For what should he do with a Crown that he cannot wear Why should he accept of a trust that he cannot discharge and a Government that his Principles oblige him to transfer to a Forein Prince he is too generous a Prince to enter upon a Province onely to betray it He is a Prince of great Charity it was that surely mov'd him publickly to confess the Roman Religion that he might thereby recommend that Religion to our belief for the better reforming us from Heresie Why then should not the same Charity move him to renounce the Government lest he should offer an irresistable temptation to the People to a Rebellion a greater sin accounted by a King though a Catholick however the Priests rate it than an errour in belief But how can we imagine that he will condescend to be our King He doth not intend to accept of our Oaths of Allegiance and had rather not be King than we should be his Subjects upon those terms Why should we trouble him with the name of King reproach him call him Apostate Heretick and Infidel by swearing our selves his Subjects in the terms of the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy Pray think no more of it write no more Great and Weighty Considerations for he intends to be no more your King than he doth to desert his Religion and the Roman Catholick Faith Besides his Zeal and Services and the Difficulties that he hath undergone for that Church and the hazards he hath incur'd deserve the best Place and highest Office in that Church which is that of a Priest he ought not to be put off and meanly rewarded with the Sheriffalties which their Eminencies of the Conclave despise and be prefer'd to all the Drudgeries and Cruelties that the Priesthood of that Church require of the Kings of that Communion that