TWO LETTERS WRITTEN To the AUTHOR of a PAMPHLET ENTITULED Solomon and Abiathar OR The CASE of the Deprived Bishops and Clergy DISCUSSED PSAL. 50. 18. When thou sawest a Thief then thou consentedst with him and hast been Partaker with Adulterers LONDON Printed in the Year MDCXCII The First LETTER SIR ENcouraged by your Preface I take the freedom to send you these few lines You acknowledge some such defects as to your self that you cannot make a satisfactory reply to your own Conscience and I am sorry you should Print a Case for the Information of others of which you was never throughly satisfied your self That you have sufficiently consulted our Adversaries I make no doubt because I find in your Book those two main things wherein their great strength consists Lyes and Disguises As for the first they have plainly imposed upon you contrary to their own Knowledge and Conscience and as to the other they have instilled into you their very Art But had you taken Astraea's Motto along with you Audi alteram partem and as freely consulted some of my suffering Brethren as you have done their sly but implacable Foes I am confident you had set this Controversie in a much clearer light and not written as you intimate you have now done with a reluctancy of Mind and Conscience But since you call us in to your aid though so very late we are willing as becomes Christians to comply with your honest request and I scruple not in behalf of my Brethren to promise you full information and that the matter shall be handled mildly closely and fairly all personal Quarrels and Reflections laid aside provided that you will procure us the priviledge of the Press in this particular We may reasonably hope that we shall not be denied in this for else why do you in Print call on us for Information and tell us that your design in so doing is not only to quiet your own Conscience but also to provoke the Learned to offer such Discourses thereupon to the publick as may settle others besides it will be disingenuous and base in Carolus Alston to license these Hue and Cries after us to vindicate our Cause and yet not suffer us to print a line in answer to those whom he licenseth thus to call on us But if after all we meet with a sham you must pardon me if I plainly tell you that I shall look on all your pretences as an artificial Contrivance and an extraordinary Strain of of supersine Hypocrisie worthy of this more than Pharisaical Age For what else can be the meaning of it but to keep us in hand and employ us in looking after I know not whom whilst your Book uncontradicted slies abroad and not only misrepresents our Cause but exposeth us as if we neither could nor would write in its behalf being so solemnly called on And there is this more to engage you to assist our Request to the utmost that if there be any errors in your Book as I am sure there are some very gross ones it will highly concern you that Truth may with all speed follow at the heels of it to prevent if possible that mischief which otherwise it may do and for which at the great day of Accounts you must in a great measure answer as uhe primary Cause and Author But if we must be mock'd with Calls whilst it is intended that we shall never be suffered to return any Answer you may justly expect that if ever we can put the blind upon your Watch-men we shall not only defend our Cause but also expose their profound Hypocrisy who like Joab kiss and stab and never pretend to be possessed with a fit of tenderness or kindness for us but with a design to put a Cheat upon Mankind and push on our utter Ruine and Destruction Sir Pray think of these things with due care and let me have your Answer with speed and thereby you will much oblige Sir Your unknown Friend and Servant T. B. June 28. 1692. An ADVERTISEMENT to the Reader The foregoing Letter was sent acording to the Author 's direction and pretended request and therewith plain instructions how to return an Answer but he not vouchsafing one syllable after two months waiting I thought fit to send both this and the following Letter by the Press seeing he would take no notice of the Post The Second LETTER SIR YOur Preface savouring something of a Tender and Christian Spirit made me read your little Tract with the greater care but when I had throughly perused it I not only sound my expectation sadly baffled but stood amazed to see all the Marks and Tokens of a most Wicked and Malicious Design carried on under such plausible melting Pretences If therefore you are not conscious to your self of any Insincerity it will concern you to vindicate your self by publishing an Ingenuous and Fair Answer to the following Objections wherewith to me you seem justly chargeable And in the first place I cannot altogether acquit you Partiality and Unkindness in assigning the Names of the Speakers in your Dialogue for not to concern my self with Mr. Easy and Mr. Troublesome who chime so neatly under the Greek disguise of Dyscheres and Eucheres that which I think I except against not without just cause is that you call one a Conformist the other a Recusant now Conformist is in it self an honest word and of good reputation and heretofore was used to signifie a person who approved and complied with the Doctrine and Discipline of the Church of England but by it you plainly mean the Good Old Cause Men newly come again in fashion who have set aside God's Commandments and live in the open breach of them without the least remorse of Conscience who have not only departed from but with all their might wickedly set themselves against those Doctrines which the Church of England always valued as her Characteristical Mark and for which she was esteemed all the World over who have enervated her Discipline made wicked additions to her Prayers and attempted to make such alterations as would not leave her the same Church if it could deserve the Name of any and though they failed to obtain this last by English Interest yet they comfort themselves with no small hopes that e're long they shall compass it by a Sherlockian Authority Now some few years since we were accustomed to call such Men as these Conformists but if by Conformists you mean persons that will comply with or do any thing for base ends then I shall not envy them the Title and I think you may have bestowed it on them not unfitly Then as to the Name Recusant you know it is most commonly applied to Papists in which sense it is as falsly as maliciously cast upon us and indeed if we either were Papists or your Party did but so much as think us such they would use us better for though the hideous Names of Popery and Papists be made use of to
or pinching be spoken they are as deaf as a Beetle But farther it is not fair to make the true cause of the Breach to be only danger for it is not meer danger for which we break either with you or Rome it is not because there is danger in the Communion for that possibly might be avoided but because the sin is unavoidable in it And still it is less ingenuous to call it a Secession on our part for we are the very same persons we were we stick to the same Principles we own the same Ecclesiastical Authority but you have forsaken both and I think such make the Secession Nor can I imagine why you who have renounced both the Doctrines and Authority of the Church of England should charge us with a Secession unless it be that you have driven us from our Churches and robb'd us of our Livelihoods But in this case we have the most Eminent Fathers of God's Church for our Precedents who never thought their Cause the worse because others were more than ordinary unmercifull and maliciously bent against them When you had thus unfairly stated the case you bring in your Champion Eucheres making such an answer as is enough to pull off the Visor and lay open all your Hypocrisie For saith he Though our Church and I desire to know what Church that is justly and absolutely rejects the Roman Monarchy yet she will not refuse any lawfull Communion or Correspondence with it in any good Ecclesiastwal Negotiations consistent with Integrity saving still a publick remonstrance to all her Pollutions p. 3. What can be the meaning of this but that your Church is ready and willing to join in Communion with the Church of Rome as many of your Brethren take the Oaths i. e. with a Declaration Sir Though this may be a kind of surprize to some of your squeamish Disciples yet I tell you plainly that though you endeavour to entangle and make intricate the sense with superfluous words this and no other can be your meaning for your Argument and Parallel is insignificant and senseless if this be not your purpose For thus it follows so you should communicate with us in all that is lawfull Now it is an actual Communion in all publick Worship and Offices which you require from us and the reason you give why we should pay it is in the words before cited the sense of which must be that your Church is ready with a Remonstrance to afford the same Communion to the Church of Rome and therefore we ought not to deny it to you who take your selves to be a Church much less liable to exceptions If therefore your Argument be of any force you must mean that your Church is ready to afford the same Communion which you require of us and that is actual Communion in publick Worship Now I desire all sincere Christians to take notice of this here are a parcel of Men who for their Preaching and Praying and seeming Zeal and Mortification have been idolized by many good People who have bellowed against Popery till they have frighted People out of their wits till they had prepared them to rob any Man's House or cut his Throat whom they gave out to be a Papist or Popishly affected nay till they had persuaded them to drive away the lawfull King for being a Papist and yet here in effect they tell you that all this was trick an Art to lead People by the Nose and meer damn'd Hypocrisie For Popery is no such dreadfull thing to them but that with an insignificant Remonstrance they can go to Mass and are as willing to do it as they are desirous we should come to Prayers with them nay it is their Argument to persuade us that we may and ought to communicate with them because they think it lawfull to communicate with the Roman i. e. as they think a more polluted Church and this is laid down not as the single Opinion of the Author but as the sense of their Church Good People these are your Zealous against Popery Pray who betrays the Reformation now If we should be in danger of Popery do not you think these your Idols would stand like Bullwarks and Mountains against it who you see declare even when they have no temptation that they are now ready to meet it more than half way It is an unlucky thing Sir that you should make this discovery not only for your self but in the Name of your Church it is enough to take off the confidence the Saints have had in you and to make all persons who are not resolved to blind themselves that they may be deluded to look on you as a parcel of deep and demure yet fulsome and pernicious Hypocrites What you add That if you do amiss it is through simplicity and want of understanding which we might easilier heal by accommodation c. is such a condescending strain of Dissimulation that I am afraid you are unwilling to be taken at your word for if another should tell you which is the same thing that you are a parcel of silly weak fellows who are not to be trusted with the management of Affairs but ought to be governed by wiser Heads I am confident you would spit in his Face if you did not incense the enraged Mob to knock out his Brains But though this be a particular fetch to make easie People believe you to be a sort of most humble mortified Men yet some Men's actions have long since convinced me that they had rather be real Knaves than so much as mistaken for Fools and it is clear as noon day that those persons who you say want Understanding have for many years either palm'd curb'd and kept under or deluded and abused and now at last have undone all that would not submit to their Understandings and trukle under them and indeed all the Knavery of the Rump and Oliverian days is meer indigested stuff compared with those most Artificial Cheats which some of your Masters of Hypocrisie those humble simple Creatures as you would persuade us have shewn in our days When you please to call on me and procure me liberty to answer I will give you instances But when Dyscheres had reliped to your desires of Accommodation that there was now no more hope because you have broken the essential bonds of Ecclesiastical Communion and begun the Schism in admitting Intruders c Your Friend Eucheres makes answer by way of concession that if their i e. our Bishops and Clergy ejection was only for adhering to the Doctrines of this Church or to the Laws of God then they are persecuted by the Church as well as the State p. 3. But Sir What if neither the Laws of God nor the Church had been concerned and they had had only occasion to stand the Laws and Constitutions of the Land which under no pretence whatsoever allows the Subject to use any force against the lawfull Sovereign much less to Depose him and in
about if they be not sensible already I doubt not but they will in a little time And now Sir if you will give me the same liberty to put together which you take I cannot learn from all this how our old Laws and Oaths binds us to your new Allegiance but that rather our Constitutions and Oaths binds us to King JAMES and not to William though the contrary hereto is your shameless conclusion from your wild Premises All along you make Dyscheres by whom you represent us to give up the cause as far as you go which disingenuous dealing we have too much cause to complain of but the better to detect it I must follow your steps and now comes such a tremendous Objection that I wonder your Joynts did not tremble and your Hand shake when you set Pen to Paper it is to this effect That when the violence is essentially unjust unnatural and contrary to the moral and eternal Laws of God and Righteousness no Human compacts can ratifie such wrong or justifie and confirm what is essentially injurious nor ought the Priests of the most High God to consecrate and confirm such Rapes by Oaths and Religious Sponsions If there be any such thing as this and such I fear we shall find there is if there be any such thing as God's Commandments we had need have a care what we do That Man's wit is ill bestowed on him who argues himself out of his own Soul But here you think to slip your Neck out of the Collar by telling us That the internal Immorality of all actions must be carefully distinguished from the civil Consequences of them Well be it so we will do this for you too as fairly and carefully as we can and what then Why then suppose say you p. 6. A Son by fraudulent Arts gets Judgment in Law and seizes his Father's Estate and Body by Execution and starves his Father in Prison this Man's Immorality is damnable Is it so I think this is a bone for some body to pick which may hold him tug tho' his Teeth were as long as his NOSE But Sir what if a Daughter should do thus Will not this Womans Immorality be damnable If not pray next time you write give us a reason of the difference But it seems if they should be both damned Yet the Judges Sheriffs and other Officers are innocent It may be so whilst they act as Officers of Law and according to the directions of Law but if your Judges Sheriffs or other Officers make themselves Parties and join with and assist such a wicked Son or Daughter to effect such an evil act or do applaud and approve it when they know it be done by such wicked and unlawfull Arts then their being Officers of Law will rather encrease than deminish their guilt And so for your Robbers and Pirates a Man may lawfully suffer by them tho' it were better if he could escape it but if you will plead that their Robberies and Piracies are lawfull if you say they require a just right to what they get by such wicked means or if you actually join with them and rob and share in their Booties you will be as very a Rogue as they and which is most like the Case I leave others to judge Much such another instance is your Lord of a Mannor let him look how he came to be so I may treat with him as Lord of the Mannor whom the Law declares to be so But if the Lord's Tenants conspire against their lawfull Landlord and dispossess him of his Mannor and invite a Stranger and say and swear he shall be Lord of the Mannor and accordingly pay Homage and Fealty to him you Sir may determine for their swearing and lying too if you please but I shall have nothing the better opinion of your Honesty for it But now let the Fifth Commandment look to it self for it was never so hardly beset There are a sort of Protestants who I think are resolved by making away the Fifth Commandment to be even with the Papists for suppressing the Second and indeed according as some Men act and write unless it be to furnish pretence and to shew our fine Cloaths and eat roast Meat on Sundays I see not what occasion they have for any Commandments and so they might make Religion a Law of Liberty or a Liberty from all Law and I do not perceive Sir that you much mend the matter you say That from the Fifth Commandment we cannot charge K. W. with Subjection to King JAMES c. p. 7. If by this you mean that we cannot thence prove him to have been his Subject I do not know that ever any Man attempted such a thing but does a Nephew and a Son-in-Law owe no Duty if he owe not that which is properly called Subjection Or may a Man because he is not his Subject spoil another of all he has And must all persons applaud and approve the Act and swear he is in the right The Case of an own Daughter is still more severe but for that you say That she is in Duty bound to follow her Husband's Fortune Order and Authority even against the Will of her Father and this with a more plenary consent if she judged her Husbands Cause to be just I do not think either her or your judgment worth a farthing unless the Cause be just in it self Sorry Arguments will serve to persuade Ambitious persons that they have right to a Crown though unconcerned persons at the same time plainly see the fallaciousness of them But Sir I am not satisfied with your bare word that a Woman is bound thus to follow her Husband through thick and thin I grant that she ought to be the Partner both of his Joys and Sorrows but let her have a care how she becomes Partner in his Sins nor doth the relation of a Wife take away the relation of a Child as you seem to intimate tho' you are ashamed plainly to say it they may indeed limit each other so that the Father may not command the Daughter any thing inconsistent with the Duty of a Wife nor the Husband the Wife any thing inconsistent with the Duty of a Child to a Parent but yet the great end of these relations is to strengthen and support not to destroy each other as you closely insinuate Besides your reason is a mistake in it self as to this Case for could you with all your tricks of Legerdemain remove both King James and the Prince of Wales out of the way then there would rise another relation and then he in these Dominions must follow her Fortunes not she his for according to our Constitutions she would be his Queen and here he must be her Subject It is true the Name of King would be allowed but the Power by our Constitutions would be lodged in her and he would be liable to offend against her Laws to Treason against her Person and to be tried by her Authority
affright people and to stir up the Mob barbarously to use some persons whose Innocence the Malice of wicked Politicians could not otherwise reach yet I do not find but that at present the persons of Papists are acceptable enough and in many places are not only protected but courted and commended as very good Subjects if not put into places of great Trust But then let the word Recusant be taken in its full latitude for any sort of Dissenter yet what is that to us We firmly adhere to the Liturgy the Articles the Canons and the true Authority of the Church and I dare challenge your whole Protean Crew to tell us wherein we have stirred one step from our old ground or wherein we are changed from what we were By what notion or figure are we called Recusants for sticking close to that for the departure from which others always were stiled Recusants Pray Sir unriddle this for I confess it passes my apprehension if you are offended that some Men cannot be induced to doat either on old O. or young O. or O's Nephew yet what is that to the purpose How comes that to be a Mark of Recusancy which heretofore was thought to be an evident note of the contrary The Name is slanderously cast upon us and an ingenuous Man will think himself bound to make what satisfaction he can both for the ill Name he hath unjustly given us and for transferring what in him lies our right by the Name he hath given to our Adversaries I shall now briefly examine the Treatise it self And though it may not be worth my while to ransack it in every part of it yet I do not intend to omit any thing very considerable and I will use my best endeavour not to mistake your sense and when I have made my Remarks if you can after such pretences clear your sincerity or acquit your self from being engaged with others in a design utterly to ruine those who have suffered so much already or can maintain their Cause against us I shall be willing to find my self disappointed the best way and not reject any reasonable Conviction But before I enter upon a particular Examination I cannot forbear to lay before you some things in general wherein I could wish such a Master of Language as your self had been guilty of less ingenuity and not put tricks upon us whilst you make all imaginable pretences of Tenderness and fair Play For First The Objections on our part you rarely represent either fully or fairly and often deliver them clouded with such Flourishes of Rhetorick or mask'd with such Cant unproper for a Dispute that it is not easy for the Reader to discern wherein their main strength and force lies and you that could say for the contrary Cause more than it deserves or will bear ought at least to have done us common Justice Secondly When you come to Answer the Objections thus weakly proposed sometimes you plainly sham them sometimes you dexterously steal away your Reader and carry him off to another thing and sometimes you grant what is not to be granted Now this is not to argue our Case but to betray our Cause and any indifferent person that shall observe the whole contexture will scarce be able to free himself from a suspicion that there was some such design in it Thirdly You in downright terms shamelesly slander and bely our Suffering Bishops and Clergy and that to this very end and purpose that you might stab their Cause and either furnish their Adversaries with new Objections or give a greater force to others than indeed they had And I think this so far from being fair that it is not honest dealing and therefore is so very unbecoming a person of that Sincerity and Indifferency which you pretend to that if you take not up some better course to secure your beloved Character every one will see through the thin frail Disguise and discover the Wolf in the Sheep's Cloathing Fourthly When Arguments fail you you smartly stir up the Government against us and not content with the great Losses and the hard Circumstances we are under you move for an utter Extirpation as if the only way to confute the Cause were by a Massacre of the Persons Such a thing I have read of in France and Ireland but did never think that I should have lived in such Hellish times as to see any English Man encourage it I do not well know what Men or Devils could devise more but for a Man who professeth himself doubtfull of the Cause who would seem so consciencious as to prepare himself to suffer with us who talkt of being so full of bowels of Compassion for us who values himself for his Sincerity and Resolution to part with all for Truth I say for this Man at the same time slily to plead for the utmost Cruelty and Barbarity that can be executed upon us is certainly such a surprizing unheard of strain of Hypocrisy as was never thought on till this demure but worst of times wherein the Devil continually walks up and down like an Angel of Light and the most wicked work of Hell is done under pretence of the service of Heaven But that I may not seem to say these things gratis I shall now come to the particular Examination of your Treatise The Quarrel begins about Fasting and Feasting and Dyscheres had as good have accepted your Invitation as to be so ill treated for the Refusal though to me you seem to make a very good excuse for him That it was their Fast-day wherein they did solemnly humble themselves before God to reverse his displeasure provoked by the deplorable Disloyalty and Schism of the Nation in rejecting the true King and sincere Bishops and Clergy for their bounden Conscience and Loyalty c. p. 1. Any Man may easily perceive the malice of this sly Insinuation Whether any such days are observed I know not but if there be not I wish there were and the oftner the better For to my apprehension such are the crying sins of the Nation that scarce any Repentance can be deep enough nor any Testification of it too solemn or too frequent But good Sir Why may we not humble our selves before God for the sins of the Nation To this you answer like the Man whom the Satyr thought not fit to trust in his company because he blew hot and cold with the same breath for you are glad and sorry at the same time but the composition I find is not so strong but that your Joy presently overcomes your Sorrow and makes it quite vanish You tell us That you heartily bewail all the Evils that have happened in this Nation on occasion of this great Revolution p. 1. And I wish you say true you are so quickly again upon the merry pin for you tell us immediately That we are obliged to sing the Songs of Sion and you give us this reason That the goodness of God hath not been cessant but
case he die or relinquinish yet suffer no injury to be to the next Heir but proclaim him to be without the help of any Ceremony or Formality immediately King in the very first moment of the vacancy as admitting no Interregnum I think this had been no ill cause But then farther suppose none of these consented and that the matter only was coram non judice and they were ejected by those who had nothing to do with them with your leave Sir I do not think my self bound to ratifie the iniqulty of such proceedings But since you have assumed the Authority to assign what Causes you please I will stick to those you have named i. e. The adhering to the Doctrines of the Church and the Laws of God And what then Sir Why then you say this will require a very clear proof But pray Sir Who are they that ought to bring this clear proof I have heard some say that it is an Axiome in Law That they who expect the benefit ought to make the proof Now you get all into your hands and would you give no reason for it The Meridian Sun is not more clear than that King James possessed His Crown by an undoubted Right and the ejected Clergy held their Sees and other Charges by an unquestionable Title whether you have respect to the Laws of the Church or the Land when therefore you dispossess them of such manifest acknowledged Right you ought to bring if possible more clear and demonstrable proofs for your proceedings otherwise all reasonable Men ought to condemn you for your bold and barbarous injustice so that this clear proof you call for ought to be on your side If a Thief rob me of my Goods it were very unreasonable to leave me no other remedy than the producing such reasons to him as should prevail with him to restore them again For perhaps he would not hear me or if he did it would be but to mock me for though my proofs were never so clear yet 't is ten thousand to one that he would never own them to be so yet much at this rate you deal with us and which is worse you make our Plea for us and suffer us not to speak but as you please But since it must be so I 'll follow you in the course you take though a very unreasonable task You seem to grant That our Church teacheth us to preserve an untainted Loyalty to our Lawfull Sovereigns which with us come in by Inheritance and that accordingly our Oath of Allegiance binds us to the King his Heirs and Lawfull Successors And you might have told us several other things which this Church teacheth us viz. Canonical Obedience to our Spiritual Fathers the indispensable Duty of Children to Parents whenever they command it or their condition requires it the not running with a multitude to do evil nor the encouraging other Men in their wickedness In short whatever the sacred word of God or the reverend Constitutions of his Church requires from us But to omit these things which are so apt to gather the Tares of Schismaticks and Rebels I shall examin what you say to your own Proposals An untainted Loyalty you approve while the Obligation lasts and we desire no more But then you think this Obligation may cease not only by Death or Resignation but also by Cession nor do I think it worth while to dispute this with you provided it be real not forced nor falsly imputed For so any Man that is driven out of his House or takes a journey from home may be interpreted to have quitted his Estate by Cession But when Cession is real which is very rare it can effect only the Party who makes it and ought to be no injury to the next Heir and in our particular case our Constitutions will not suffer it But after all the main assertion is such an impudent falshood as nothing but a person bewitch'd with Rebellion would offer For has that person made a Cession who though to perserve his life he fly from Fraud and irresistable Force yet all the while claims his Right calls on all persons to do him justice and useth all honest means that may be to recover his Right At this rate every Man would have made a Cession who suffers wrong though he bestir himself all he can to do himself Right But say you This was such a Cession as the States in Convention judged a virtual Abdication of the Sovereignty and of this you add they were the most Competent Authentick and Final Judges and this you tell us we are to submit to because the Kingdom hath ratified those proceedings in a second Parliament Now not to complain of unrighteous Judgment though there was never more cause the Answer I shall return is That they were neither Competent Authentick nor Final Judges Competent they could not be who for the prevailing part of them were either actually in the Conspiracy against him or joined with the Conspirators and refused so much as to read his Letters or hear any Message from him Nor could they be Authentick Judges who had no Law to authorize either them or their Proceedings nor did I ever hear that the natural Subjects of a Sovereign Monarch could be his Authentick Judges unless from President Bradshaw the Regicides and their Adherents And if upon this score you will have the proceedings valid against the Son you must also justisie the barbarous Murder of the Father And then they could not be sinal Judges because being neither Competent nor Authentick Judges they were no proper Judges at all Nor doth it all help the matter that you call these your Judges the Estates and farther to countenance the matter place them in Convention For how are they Estates but with respect to the King and Constitution Which if they overthrow pray what becomes of their Estateships It is the King made them such and they are so with Subordination to him nor is their Convention any thing without him they cannot convene without his Writ You might have remembred that your Oracle Dr. B tells you that single defect makes an essential Nullity if they do convene they can only act by and under the King's Authority and when they are come to a resolution and have concluded upon any thing still all sinks again into nothing unless it be ratified with the Royal Assent Thus without the King your Estates are insignificant but against him our Law condemns them as Rebels and those of all others are the most unfit persons to make the only Competent Authentick and Final Judges of the most Fundamental part of our Constitutions Did ever Men make them Judges of the Law who are condemned by the Law This is to pull the Judge from the Bench and set up the Offender from the Bar. Nor will it afford you any relief that these proceedings were ratified by a second Parliament which had never a first For as for your Transubstantiating Convention which would
have persuaded us that by a certain Hocus Pocus trick they were Metamorphis'd into a Parliament you see plainly that they were no better than a Riotous Assembly whose transactions were in themselves null and void as being contrary to Law and censurable by Law And therefore your second-first-no Parliament which your Riotous Convention laid could have no more Authority than that was able to give and that was none at all for nil dat quod non habet nor can the Effect be greater than the Cause What signifies their Ratification who had no Authority but from those whom they ratisie and those whom they ratifie had none to give Your Second therefore Sir is as good as your First and both good for nothing at all and if you should go and put ten thousand nothings together still all will amount to just nothing But to secure this your weak or rather wicked Plea against a just Objection obvious to every Eye you add That though King JAMES abroad condemns them yet that is no argument either that they were unjust or inauthoritative No! But pray Sir why not Can you thus easily puff away the Right of Kings with a breath Is your bare assertion without reason sufficient to overthrow him Was he not their King Were they not his Subjects Did he complain of any thing but wrong done him Did he demand any thing but his own Might not he call upon his Subjects in whose power it was and whose duty it was to restore him Can such a modest moderate tender-hearted Man as your self thus slight and insult over a distressed Prince Or when all other Men are allowed to keep or claim or recover their right was he poor Man alone born odd that whatever he does or says must signify nothing This is cold comfort for a banished Prince but I hope others will not prove so hard hearted to him But you proceed thus When a King is fled from his Throne into Foreign Dominions or doth not exert any Royal Power or Presence to his People the Estates of this Land are the Supreme Domestick Judges upon the Tenure of the Sovereignty At this rate it will be good for Kings to keep exerting their Power for if they should but chance to sleep or fall so sick as for a time to incapacitate them for business the Estates if they please may alter the Tenure or dispose of it to another But pray Sir Answer me two Questions First Who made your Estates Judges Secondly Whether I am bound to follow their Judgment against manifest right and my known duty But after all this is a most malicious insinuation against your suffering King as if he ran away through wantonness and would have nothing to do with us but had quite forsaken his People whenas you very well know that he exerts all the Power he can that he doth not more is not his fault but yours You may have both his Power and his Presence too among you if you please But will you contrary to your Duty and Oaths keep him out by force of Arms and then plead your own wickedness in your defence I did hope for more Ingenuity from such a Pretender to Modesty But you will not allow us to deny the Authority by which they i e. your Estates sate for by what Authority say you was that Free Parliament called or sate that voted in King Charles the Second Sir if you please let another be called and Vote in King JAMES the Second when things are out of order and Good Men set them to rights again I do not think any honest Man will oppose it upon the score of some small niceties but when Subjects rebel against their Prince and drive him away and make that the ground of their going on and doing farther wickedness I cannot understand the Authority of this There is certainly in every Man an innate natural Power and Authority to wish well to and vote for Right by virtue of this when things were in confusion the Subjects of King Charles the Second returning to their Wits and Allegiance send a convenient number to act for the whole who recal their rightful King and if you should do so likewise I should not be very quarre some with you but whatever Name they might give it to put a better gloss upon the thing they were no Parliament till King Charles made them so for he their lawful King by an Act in a legal Parliament might stamp on them that Character and give then that Authority and Force which they had not before and thus several of their Acts might become Laws by virtue of that after-ratisication not by any force of their own but as for calling back the King that was not making any new Law but enforcing the old and was not so much an Act of Authority as Obedience and Duty and if you could find out the same way you would be the best Friends both to your Country and your selves You tell us That it is prodigious peevishness to require a King's Presence or Commission when he is gone and hath left all in Anarchy I hope Sir you do not think that I require a King to be present when he is absent and then with your good leave I think it no such peevishness to act by his Commission in his absence but that it is rather a thing which if it can be had ought to be done and in all regular times was done Richard the First was ingaged in the Holy War when his Father died so that he was far enough from his Throne and unable to exert any Royal Power or Presence to his People and to make the matter worse in his return he was taken prisoner and detained in Germany In this case had you been one of the Estates you would have been for setting up another King that would exert his Royal Power or Presence to his People but they had another sense of their duty they mourned under the common Calamity caused all proceedings to pass under his Name and Authority and stretch'd their purses to the purpose to redeem him and bring him home But you drive your King from home when you have him and when he would return to exert his Royal Power and Presence you will not suffer it but keep him out with your Swords in your Hands and these rebellious Actions you make Precedents to warrant all the Mischief you have or would do and after all you would perswade us that you are a parcel of guiltless humble modest consciencious Creatures Clamat Melicerta periisse frontem de rebus At last to help a lame dog over a style you say The Estates of any Nation being invited by a victorious and unresisted Power may come together and treat with him that thus calls them though he hath not antecedent Authority strictly taken to call them Here is a pretty fetch in the word unresisted Power for irresistable he knew it was not and if it was unresisted whose fault was that
May they refuse to resist an invading power when they are able And may they make that disobedience the reason of their compliance with him and casting off their own Sovereign But if without daubing you had put the case as it was it ought to run thus The Estates of any Nation or the Natural Subjects of any Sovereign Prince may combine with and invite in a Foreign Prince and when he comes though with a contemptible force they may forsake their lawful Prince and then by their treachery having left him helpless and hopeless may treat with the Foreigner drive away their own King give his Crown to the Foreigner and maintain it with their Swords and Purses without which he could not keep his ill-gotten Goods But I suppose it was your modesty which made you disguise this true proposal of the matter because so plainly set down it would not well bear the light That the Church's Loyalty as to the Object is to be guided by the true constitution of the State I deny not but I shall never yield what you would thence slurr upon us That it is to follow every Civil Judgment much less the uncivil Judgment of any Sett of Conspirators and Traytors into whose Hands you so liberally and piously dispose it When you had thus loosely argued you introduce Dyscheres in our behalf yielding to your Plea p. 4. but you see it is one thing for a Man to speak for himself and another thing for another to speak for him for you may perceive that I am not of the same mind for which I have given you some Reasons which I hope you will answer or not for the future conclude that we have yielded the Cause It was more than belonged to you to take upon you to plead our Cause but to give it away and betray it is too much but to do it in such a manner that it might seem done by our selves and that all persons might believe we had given up the Cause looks like a designed piece of knavery But Sir if you had no power to bestow what you have so prodigally given away and the Reasons I have produced against it be valid then you ought to remember that all your following discourse is insignificant and vain as being built upon a false Foundation But let that pass and let us see what you will allow to be said in our case and it is this How could they i. e. your Estates pervert the hereditary law and rule of Succession that is fundamental to this Crown To this you Answer That the general and ordinary rule of Succession to this Crown is hereditary but in extraordinary Interruptions and Convulsions of State against the ordinary course our Laws and Constitutions do allow the Estates such a King as can be actually had for the time being till the ordinary rule can be fairly recovered Now if a Man were to speak this in plain English it would be thus By our Laws and Constitutions the Crown is Hereditary but if any Usurper or Traytor will not suffer it to be so but puts by the right Heir and gets possession himself the Laws and Constitutions allow him to be King yes marry and a Lawful King too i. e. the Crown goes in a Lineal Succession whilst People are peaceable and obedient but if they be troublesome and rebellious then it is catch as catch can and he had Right and Law of his side who gets possession and so will another and another without end who can successively wrest the possession from those who had the right whilst they could keep possession Did ever any Body hear of such a Constitution as this Or was ever any thing better fitted to produce Eternal Confusions Certainly you have a mind to perswade us that our Constitutions were made by the Wise men of Goatham or the Wiser men of Bedlam Sir I have look'd with both my Eyes and cannot see how Happy we are as you tell us in this and I am afraid you have been cheated with false Spectacles but at last you are willing to qualifie the matter and to suffer this only till the ordinary rule can be fairly recovered If this be so pray why is it not recovered Sure you will not plead that in Justification of a People which is notoriously their Fault and such a Fault as is in their power to mend when they please let them but unanimously as they ought return to their Duty and Loyalty and the thing will do it self fairly enough and without any great pains trouble or danger but you presently relapse and become a zealous Advocate for your Extraordinary Kings in whose behalf you plead Acts of Parliament made by extra-lineal Kings which were confirmed submitted to you subtily phrase it by the Lineal Heirs and these were approved by Lawyers nor did the Church ever remonstrate against them And what of all this Let the Usurpation or Confusions be what they will still Men will eat and drink buy and sell and such like acts nor do I think that such a State doth acquit Men from the obligation to do what in them lies such things as seem absolutely necessary for the preservation of the Society and the real Good of Mankind and if any such things as are necessary for the management of Humane Affairs and which are accompanied with common Justice in themselves should be now done or enacted and hereafter confirmed by King JAMES I know no reason to remonstrate against this but I think the need of such a confirmation is a demonstration where the Right and Authority lies which is an odd way of proving the right of your extralineal Kings But pray Sir upon such extraordinary Interruptions did all Men ever thnik themselves bound to approve them Did they not still as opportunity served assist Right Did not such proceedings cost a world of Blood and Treasure to none or rather very ill purpose whilst no peace or ease could be had till things were brought to rights again When matters are in trouble or confusion wise and good Men think it the best way to put an end to them assoon as may be but you cast out that Right which only can restore our Peace and when you have conjured up most horrid Confusions plead for their continuance I know not what could be done more by an Advocate of the Prince of Darkness As for what you say concerning Bishop Overall's Convocation-Book I am sorry that a pretender to so much modesty should be guilty of such an impudent assertion when that matter hath been so fully cleared by so many learned and judicious Pens At last you very gravely give us your Opinion That in the late Oath of Allegiance the word Successors was added after Heirs on this very self-same ground That though Heirs by the ordinary course are the Legal Successors yet others legally may succeed in cases extraordinary This it is for Men to give their Opinions without-book and without any other consideration than to