Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n
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A52586
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An ansvver to a passage in Mr. Baxter's book, intituled, A key for Catholicks, beginning pag. 321, concerning the King's being put to death by John Nanfan, Esq.
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Nanfan, John.
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1660
(1660)
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Wing N148; ESTC R3575
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45,130
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57
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given me the Kingdomes of the Earth And Daniel most full the Pattent of the King as extensive to all Creatures and Powers under him Dan. 1. ver 37 38. The God of Heaven hath given thee a Kingdom Power and Strength and Glory and in all places where the Children of men dwell the Beasts of the field and the Fowls of the Heaven has he given into thy hand and hath made thee Ruler over them all An Illustration of Gods dominion over all Creatures and acting by Kings his immediate Vice-gerents to the end of the 5th chapter of Daniel being nothing else then Gods clayming his Title over Kings as derivative from God and accountable to him Now all this is from the great end in nature that Kings being to rule the people which is Gods proper Office and Attribute all Power and all Dominion and all Providence being his they represent God and are his Image and Effigies in Ruling and Governing and this makes their dependance to be meerly of God and not accountable to any Power under God The nature of it is shewed in that of Saul as being the first King to the Jews and being the institutive of it comprehends the nature of it The person was meerly of Gods choice not left to the people nor any power left in them much less over the King In that day shall they cry unto the Lord sayes the Text That is 1 Sam. 8.18 no power to be against the Kings Power but an appeal only to an higher Power that is to God himself his Author and Founder they might complain of him that was set over them but had not any Authority of their own over him And this makes it in its nature to be the greatest trust in the World because there is no remedy against it contrary to Mr. Baxter's sense abusing the Term making Trust subject The reason of this absolute subjection of the People to Government lyes in the nature of it that no medium can be found betwixt power of Governing and liberty in the people as not Governed to be subject only to the good of Government is no Government at all or to be subject at all therefore of meer force from its nature it leaves nothing in the wills of the people so as no such mean or half being of it can be by any constitution provision or Policy whatsoever when it comes to Govern all those things though part of the Government yet come under the governing Power Now for the Originals of Ruling Powers ordinarily amongst men as to the persons ruling in such a Line and Succession we shall find it to be still from a first Power before it came to Governing Power the one introductive of the other for Power is its matter and nature for we see all Government is Power and the Power will govern Therefore equivocally the terms and names are used sometimes calling it the Government and sometimes the Power so as it is the same and signifies the same thing inseperables in nature Government and Power no remove can be in it for where the Power is there the Government will go along with it Hence it is that there is never any discontinuance in governing Power over the people In the most confused tumultuous War and distraction that ever was yet there is power still somewhere or other that contains the peoples liberty and subjects them so as there is not one moment or minute of time in the World where society and community of man is that there is any vacuum of Power to be over them and although powers devest one another yet the Series of governing Power is still continued and in all such removes of the Powers yet the Power never falls but is kept alwayes up and is in some still and is as inseperable from the People as the matter and the Form which never are asunder For that which we call Power out of the People it is not the people but a Power acting upon the People and in such a circumstance of it if it become too powerful for the Government then it becomes the Government it self Now having shewed thus the nature of it it destroyes all those imaginary Theaters that they would erect and build popular liberty upon and popular right over Kings They would fancy governing Power to be of the wills of the people and the people the Author so impossible an assertion as I only leave it upon what I have stated and how contradictory it is to nature in all consideration of it so as still the people is but the subject matter of Government never the Author of it nor does Government ever come below the people in the cause of it but must derive out of its own cause which is power to be above the people and so in all end and acting of it All this is still to explode that Monstrous conceit of the peoples instituting the Government or more Monstrous consequence of it the people as the first cause of it to dispose of it and destroy it It is observable in Government that Laws and Liberties come afterward to the people after power of the Government it self In the Norman Conquest all lay flatted some time under it till afterward as the Reporters of those times tell us that the party of the Conqueror or their Posterity did revive the English Liberties first the Conqueror's absolute will served them to expel and dispossess the Natives and after they were glad of establishments in Government to assure their own condition and what they had gained So as hereby we see Governments the farther they go on from their beginnings the more they take in of composition to their first single Nature so as still the Originals of Government are most absolute Hence it is manifest that Power is their Fountain and first cause as such is their Natures and the People's Freedom still is under Government and when Government is most confused then is their Freedom least so as still Power is over them and are alwayes subject to it let the Form of it be what it will To consider it in common Reason and Understanding the King took his Being from the People's Trust in Mr. Baxter's sense therfore the People are to dispose of him This were for the People not to be governed for then the Right were in the People and the King betrayed to govern under another Authority to make it accomptable Therefore this supposeth a Monster in nature and it would evermore make Government destructive to it self for then it doth not govern for where the end and ultimate of Power is there the Government is I shall insert something that is legal in this pertinent to the Case of the King of England how he comes to be King Sir Edward Coke that was a man popular enough in his third part of his Institutes pag. 7. saith That there is no such thing of the Kingly Being in England as an Inter-Regnum nor any Act confers to the making
the highest Judge of the safety or danger of the Re-publick and that it is Treason against the Common-wealth and as Politicians say against the Majestas realis to rise against them Answ Mr. Baxter hath of this in several places the Parliament's Supremacy it is his Goliath I shall answer generally to it at once Now the Arguments may be many I will make it but a Passage not a serious Debate and give but hints of truths that may be enlarged The first is that I am sure though I was not of that time that Kings were when Parliaments were not and then must be granted absolute the other not in being We cannot suppose here in England any time of Government without Kings and the Kings themselvs thought it best to convene the People to draw thereby aids of the Publick by publick consent and likewise to have all Counsels and all Grievances in common to be common in helps and means which is strongest and peradventure to ballance the Loâ—ds by this popular Power Whatsoever the ends were in it or the use to be made of it or accidents that grew out of it it shews it was a Creature mearly of the King's Will and creating and therefore cannot be intended but to act under him and to his help as the end of its Being So being called by the King in this sense they bear in them the Peoples Rights whatsoever was left in the People to be disposed of by their own consent Their Power therefore must hold proportion with that that is only in the quality of the People as to complain of Grievances and petition Redresses to give their private to the Publick and to consent to alter Fundamentals as there shall be cause all which are the natural Rights of the People and common consent is required to them Now this does not reach at all to Mr. Baxter's sense of sharing with the King in Supremacy and Power and right of governing nothing at all of it All Parliament rights have their station below governing it is by accident when they meddle with the Government as about the causes that require their help And all great and outward relations and inward may be Objects of this great Body of the People as their help is required but this with that caution as the King puts them on and takes them off So jealous a thing is Soveraignty it self And it is a nice distinction to make them Judges of the necessity and not to judge of the cause of the necessity and therefore involve themselvs sometimes in it too far and the retreats have been difficult No doubt this must needs be a strange great considerable Power in the consequence of it that which all the rest moves by and is the matter or means of the Government But this does not alter the Nature of it It is a most noble Constitution because it begets treatment betwixt Prince and People and there is a correspondency betwixt the giving of the one and the retribution of the other but when either make too much use of their Power it destroys the order and the inconvenience is so intolerable to the Nation as they are brought again to it and must correspond Now nothing preservs so much as when things keep to their Natures The good of Parliaments does consist within their own rights and not to enter into the King's for then it breaks the Parliament or the Parliament breaks the Government To return to the nature of the Objection of co-ordinate Power of Parliaments The Parliament is a Creation that comes out of the King's Will and Power nothing of Power to beget it self and therefore cannot be understood to serve to another end against that which was its cause and which it self had absolute Being without it Never to this day they have Power to their own Being but at the King's Will a meer Entity first in the King's Will before it can have any in them so as they are meerly Creatures having their Creation from another's Will and so to determine them after they are in being which shews the most absolute depending on another Power that possibly can be Hence rationally and consequently of this it must be that the end is of the Agent and Author and not to be their own end that did not nor could not move to their own Being so as meerly it follows A Parliament is the King's business because it flows out of his Will And some Acts have been made by consent of Kings for certainty of Parliaments but have not bound Kings for we see they have been discontinued many years together So certain it is that Regal Right cannot be restrained Now the King 's good and the People's are so necessarily conjoyned as it cannot be supposed they can serve the King but it must conserve the Kingdom and all the People And hence flows all publick considerations and conclusions the whole Interest of the Nation resolves it self into it and all the Powers submit to it because all parties are in it by convention or representation and the King can make lawful whatsoever they can consent to But without the King they are a meer inanimate Body and can act nothing they are as the Womb or Matrix the King is the generative Masculine part that gives life and production and actuates and forms their conceptions And the difference not rightly conceived begets the mistake confounding their Power with that of ordinary standing Courts which act by the King's Power invested in them which he cannot with-draw or deny to and this of Parliaments which is extraordinary and by the King's consent And then too their work is about the generality not to do with the ordinary proceedings of Law proper to other Courts but only the abuse of them The Author of the History of Independency affirms pag. 35. History of Independency 35. that the judicial Power of the House of Lords is by the King 's special Authority his Argument upon it is The King makes them Admiministrators and interpreters of his Laws but he never trusts any but himself with the Power of pardoning and dispensing with the rigour of the Law in Criminal cases And though the Lord Keeper is Speaker of the Lord's House of course yet he is no Member of the Lord's House virtute Officii The Judges are not Members but Assistants only so that no man in the House of Peers as he is simply a Peer is trusted by the King either by dispensation of Law or Equity When a Peer of Parliament or any man else is tryed before the Lords in Parliament criminally he cannot be tried by his Peers only because in acts of Judicature there must be a Judge Superior who must have his Inferiors ministerial to him Therefore in the Trial of the Earl of Strafford as in all other Trials upon Life and Death in the Lord's House the King grants his Commission to a Lord High Steward to sit as Judge and the rest of the Lords are but in