own and their Countries Right of a detestable and â—â—rrid Imposture Your Country may be aâ—…amed you Rascall to have brought forth a little inconsiderable fellow of such profligate impudence But perhaps you have somewhat to tell us that may be for our good Go on we 'l hear you VVhat Laws say you can a Parliament Enact in which the Bishops are 〈◊〉 present Did you then ye madman expell the Order of Bishops out of the Church to introduce them into the State O wicked wretch who ought to be delivered over to Satan whom the Church ought to forbid her Communion as being a Hypocrite and an Atheist and no Civil Society of men to acknowledg as a member being a publick enemy and a Plague-sore to the common liberty of Mankind who where the Gospel fails you endeavour to prove out of Aristetle Halicarnassaeus and then from some Popish Authorities of the most corrupt ages that the King of England is the head of the Church of England to the end that you may as far as in you lies bring in the Bishops again his Intimates and Table-Companions grown so of late to rob and Tyrannize in the Church of God whom God himself hath deposed and degraded whose very Order you had heretofore asserted in Print that it ought to be rooted out of the world as destructive of and pernicious to the Christian Religion What Apostate did ever so shamefully and wickedly desert as this man has done I do not say his own which indeed never was any but the Christian Doctrine which he had formerly asserted The Bishops being put down who under the King and by his permission held Plea of Ecclesiastical Causes upon whom say you will that Jurisdiction devolve O Villain have some regard at least to your own Conscience Remember before it be too late if at least this admonition of mine come not too late remember that this mocking the Holy Spirit of God is an inexpiable crime and will not be left unpunisht Stop at last and set bounds to your fury lest the wrath of God lay hold upon you suddenly for endeavouring to deliver the flock of God his Anointed ones that are not to be touched to Enemies and cruel Tyrants to be crusht and trampled on again from whom himself by a high and stretched out arm had so lately delivered them and from whom you your self maintained that they ought to be delivered I know not whether for any good of theirs or in order to the hardning of your own heart and to further your own damnation If the Bishops have no right to Lord it over the Church certainly much less have Kings whatever the Laws of men may be to the contrary For they that know any thing of the Gospel know thus much that the Government of the Church is altogether Divine and Spiritual and no Civil Constitution Whereas you say That in Secular Affairs the Kings of England have always had the Sovereign Power Our Laws do abundantly declare that to be false Our Courts of Justice are erected and suppressed not by the King's Authority but that of the Parliament and yet in any of them the meanest Subject might go to Law with the Ring nor is it a rare thing for the Judges to give Judgment against him which if the King should endeavour to obstruct by any Prohibition Mandate or Letters the Judges were bound by Law and by their Oaths not to obey him but to reject such Inhibitions as null and void in Law the King could not imprison any man or seize his Estate as forfeited he could not punish any man not summoned to appear in Court where not the King but the ordinary Judges gave Sentence which they frequently did as I have said against the King Hence our Bractan lib. 3. cap. 9. The Regal Power says he is according to Law he has no power to do any wrong nor can the King do any thing but what the Law warrants Those Lawyers that you have consulted men that have lately fled their Countrey may tell you another tale and acquaint you with some Statutes not very Ancient neither but made in King Edward 4th's King Henry 6th's and King Edward 6th's days but they did not consider That what power soever those Statutes gave the King was conferred upon him by Authority of Parliament so that he was beholding to them for it and the same power that conferr'd it might at pleasure resume it How comes it to pass that so acute a disputant as you should suffer your self to be imposed upon to that degree as to make use of that very Argument to prove the King's Power to be Absolute and Supreme than which nothing proves more clearly That it is subordinate to that of the Parliament Our Records of the greatest Authority with us declare That our Kings owe all their Power not to any Right of Inheritance of Conquest or Succession but to the people So in the Parliament Rolls of King Hen. 4. numb 108. we read That the Kingly Office and Power was granted by the Commons to King Henry the 4th and before him to his Predecessor King Richard the 2d just as Kings use to grant Commissioners places and Lieutenantships to their Deputies by Edicts and Patents Thus the House of Commons ordered expresly to be entred upon record That they had granted to King Richard to use the same good Liberty that the Kings of England before him had used Which because that King abused to the subversion of the Laws and contrary to his Oath at his Coronation the same persons that granted him that power took it back again and deposed him The same men as appears by the same Record declared in open Parliament That having confidence in the Prudence and Moderation of King Henry the 4th they will and enact That he enjoy the same Royal Authority that his Ancestors enjoyed Which if it had been any other than in the nature of a Trust as this was either those Houses of Parliament were foolish and vain to give what was none of their own or those Kings that were willing to receive as from them what was already theirs were too injurious both to themselves and their Posterity neither of which is likely A third part of the Regal Power say you is conversant about the Mâ—litia this the Kings of England have used to order and govern without Fellow or Competitor This is as false as all the rest that you have taken upon the credit of Fugitives For in the first place both our own Histories and those of Foreigners that have been any whit exact in the relation of our Affairs declare That the making of Peace and War always did belong to the Parliament And the Laws of St. Edward which our Kings were bound to swear that they would maintain make this appear beyond all exception in the Chapter De Heretochus viz. That there were certain Officers appointed in every Province and County throughout the Kingdom that were called Heretochs in Latin
and teach such a Doctor as you That the word Tyrant for all your concern is barely to have some understanding of words may be applied to one who is neither a Traytor nor a Murtherer But the Laws of England do not make it Treason in the King to stir up Sedition against himself or the people Nor do they say That the Parliament can be guilty of Treason by deposing a bad King nor that any Parliament ever was so tho they have often done it but our Laws plainly and clearly declare that a King may violate diminish nay and wholly lose his Royalty For that expression in the Law of St. Edward of losing the name of a King signifies neither more nor less than being deprived of the Kingly Office and Dignity which befel Chilperic King of France whose example for illustration-sake is taken notice of in the Law it self There is not a Lawyer amongst us that can deny but that the highest Treason may be committed against the Kingdom as well as against the King I appeal to Glanvile himself whom you cite If any man attempt to put the King to death or raise Sedition in the Realm it is High Treason So that attempt of some Papists to blow up the Parliament-House and the Lords and Commons there with Gunpowder was by King James himself and both Houses of Parliament declared to be High Treason not against the King only but against the Parliament and the whole Kingdom 'T would be to no purpose to quote more of our Statutes to prove so clear a Truth which yet I could easily do For the thing it self is ridiculous and absurd to imagine That High Treason may be committed against the King and not against the people for whose good nay and by whose leave as I may say the King is what he is So that you babble over so many Statutes of ours to no purpose you toil and wallow in our Ancient Law-Books to no purpose for the Laws themselves stand or fall by Authority of Parliament who always had power to confirm or repeal them and the Parliament is the sole Judge of what is Rebellion what High Treason Iaesa Majestas and what not Majesty never was vested to that degree in the Person of the King as not to be more conspicuous and more August in Parliament as I have often shown But who can endure to hear such a senseless Fellow such a French Mountebank as you declare what our Laws are And you English Fugitives so many Bishops Doctors Lawyers who pretend that all Learning and Ingenuous Literature is fled out of England with your selves was there not one of you that could defend the King's Cause and your own and that in good Latin too to be submitted to the judgment of other Nations but that this brain-sick beggarly Frenchman must be hired to undertake the Defence of a poor indigent King surrounded with so many Infant-Priests and Doctors This very thing I assure you will be a great imputation to you amongst Foreigners and you will be thought deservedly to have lost that Cause that you were so far from being able to defend by Force of Arms as that you cannot so much as write in behalf of it But now I come to you again good-man goose-cap who scribble so finely if at least you are come to your self again for I find you here towards the latter end of your Book in a deep sleep and dreaming of some voluntary Death or other that 's nothing to the purpose Then you deny that 't is possible for a King in his right wits to embroil his people in Seditions to betray his own Forces to be slaughtered by Enemies and raise Factions against himself All which things having been done by many Kings and particularly by Charles the late King of England you will no longer doubt I hope especially being addicted to Stoicism but that all Tyrants as well as profligate Villains are downright mad Hear what Horace says Whoever through a senseless Stupidity or any other cause whatsoever hath his Understanding so blinded as not to discern truth the Stoicks account of him as of a mad-man And such are whole Nations such are Kings and Princes such are all Man kind except those very few that are Wise So that if you would clear King Charles from the Imputation of acting like a Mad-man you must first vindicate his integrity and show that he never acted like an ill man But a King you say cannot commit Treason against his own Subjects and Vassals In the first place since we are as free as any People under Heaven we will not be impos'd upon by any Barbarous Custom of any other Nation whatsoever In the second place Suppose we had been the King's Vassals that Relation would not have obliged us to endure a Tyrant to Reign and Lord it over us All Subjection to Magistrates as our own Laws declare is circumscribed and confined within the bounds of Honesty and the Publick Good Read Leg. Hen. 1. Cap. 55. The Obligation betwixt a Lord and his Tenants is mutual and remains so long as the Lord protects his Tenant this all our Lawyers tells us but if the Lord be too severe and cruel to his Tenant and do him some heinous Injury The whole Relation betwixt them and whatever Obligation the Tenant is under by having done Homage to his Lord is utterly dissolv'd and extinguish'd These are the very words of Bracton and Fleta So that in some Case the Law it self warrants even a Slave or a Vassal to oppose his Lord and allows the Slave to kill him if he vanquish him in Battle If a City or a whole Nation may not lawfully take the Course with a Tyrant the Condition of Freemen will be worse than that of Slaves Then you go about to excuse King Charles's shedding of Innocent Blood partly by Murders committed by other Kings and partly by some Instances of Men put to Death by them lawfully For the matter of the Irish Massacre you refer the Reader to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and I refer you to Eiconoclastes The Town of Rochel being taken and the Towns-men betray'd assistance shown but not afforded them you will not have laid at Charlos's door nor have I any thing to say whether he was faulty in that business or not he did mischief enough at home we need not enquire into what Misdemeanors he was guilty of abroad But you in the mean time would make all the Protestant Churches that have at any time defended themselves by force of Arms against Princes who were profess'd Enemies of their Religion to have been guilty of Rebellion Let them consider how much it concerns them for the maintaining their Ecclesiastical Discipline and asserting their own Integrity not to pass by so great an Indignity offered them by a Person bred up by and amongst themselves That which troubles us most is that the English likewise were betray'd in that Expedition He who had design'd long ago to convert
of our Fugitives only I wish they had clove there to this day for we know very well that there 's nothing more common with them than to have their mouths full of Curses and Imprecations which indeed all good men abominate but withal despise As for others it 's hardly credible that when they heard the news of our having inflicted a Capital Punishment upon the King there should any be found especially in a Free State so naturally adapted to Slavory as either to speak ill of us or so much as to censure what we had done Nay 't is highly probable that all good men applauded us and gave God thanks for so illustrious so exalted a piece of Justice and for a caution so very useful to other Princes In the mean time as for those fierce those steel hearted men that you say take on for and bewall so pitifully the lamentable and wonderful death of I know not who them I say together with their tinkling Advocate the dullest that ever appeared since the Name of a King was born and known in the world we shall e'en let whine on till they cry their eyes out But in the mean time what School-boy what little insignificant Monk could not have made a more elegant Speech for the King and in better Latin than this Royal Advocate has done But it would be folly in me to make such particular Animadversions upon his Childishness and Frenzies throughout his Book as I do here upon a few in the beginning of it which yet I would be willing enough to do for we hear that he is swollen with Pride and Conceit to the utmost degree imaginable if the ill-put-together and immethodical bulk of his book did not protect him He was resolved to take a course like the Soldier in Terence to save his Bacon and it was very cunning in him to stuff his Book with so much Childishness and so many silly whimsies that it might nauseate the smartest man in the world to death to take notice of 'em all Only I thought it might not be amiss to give a specimen of him in the Preface and to let the serious Reader have a taste of him at first that he might guess by the first dish that 's serv'd up how noble an Entertainment the rest are like to make and that he may imagine within himself what an infinite number of Fooleries and Impertinencies must heeds be heaped up together in the body of the Book when they stand so thick in the very Entrance into it where of all other places they ought to have been shunned His tittle-tattle that follows and his Sermons fit for nothing but to be worm eaten I can easily pass by as for any thing in them relating to us we doubt not in the least but that what has been written and published by Authority of Parliament will have far greater weight with all wise and sober men than the Calumnies and Lies of one single impudent little Fellow who being hired by our Fugitives their Countrey 's Enemies has scrap'd together and not scrupled to publish in Print whatever little Story any one of them that employed him put into his head And that all men may plainly see how little conscience he makes of setting down any thing right or wrong good or bad I desire no other Witness than Salmasius himself In his book entituled Apparatus contra Primatum Papae he says There are most weighty Reasons why the Church ought to lay aside Episcopacy and return to the Apostolical Institution of Presbyters That a far greater â—ischief has been introduced into the Church by Eâ—…copacy than the Schisms themselves were which were before apprehended That the Plague which Episcopacy introduced depressed the whole body of the Church under a miserable Tyranny Nay had put a yoke even upon the necks of Kings and Princes That it would be more beneficial to the Church if the whole Hierarchy it self were extirpated than if the Pope only who is the Head of it were laid aside page 160. That it would be very much for the good of the Church if Episcocy were taken away together with the Papacy That if Episcopacy were once taken down the Papacy would fall of it self as being founded upon it page 171. He says he can show very good reasons why Episcopacy ought to be put down in those Kingdoms that have renounced the Pope's Supremacy but that he can see no reason for retaining it there That a Reformation is not entire that is defective in this point That no reason can be alledged no probable cause assigned why the Supremacy of the Pope being once disowned Episcopacy should notwithstanding be retained page 197. Tho he had wroâ—e all this and a great deal more to this effect but four years ago he is now become so vain and so impudent withal as to accuse the Parliament of England for not only turning the Bishops out of the House of Lords but for abolishing Episcopacy it self Nay he persuades us to receive Episcopacy and defends it by the very same Reasons and Arguments which with a great deal of earnestness he had confuted himself in that former Book to wit That Bishops were necessary and ought to have been retained to prevent the springing up of a Thousand pernicious Sects and Heresies Crafty Turn-coat Are you not asham'd to shift hands thus in things that are Sacred and I had almost said to betray the Church whose most solemn Institutions you seem to have asserted and vindicated with so much noise that when it should seem for your interest to change sides you might undo and subvert all again with the more disgrace and infamy to your self It 's notoriously known That when both Houses of Parliament being extremely desirous to Reform the Church of England by the pattern of other Reformed Churches had resolved to abolish Episcopacy the King first interposed and afterwards waged War against them chiefly for that very cause which proved fatal to him Go now and â—oast of your having Defended the King who that you might the better defend him do now openly betray and impugn the Cause of the Church whose Defence you your self had formerly undertaken and whose severest Censures ought to be inflicted upon you As for the present form of our Government since such a Foreign insignificant Professor as you having laid aside your Boxes and Desks stufft with nothing but Trifles which you might have spent your time better in putting into order will needs turn busie-body and be troublesome in other mens matters I shall return you this answer or rather not to you but to them that are wiser than your self viz. That the Form of it is such as our present distractions will admit of not such as were to be wish'd but such as the obstinate Divisions that are amongst us will bear What State soever is pestered with Factions and defends it self by Force of Arms is very just in having regard to those only that are found and untainted and
your Bones well-thrash'd with a Fool 's staff for thinking to stir up Kings and Princes to War by such Childish Arguments Then you cry aloud to all Nations who I know full well will never heed what you say You call upon that Wretched and Barbarous Crew of Irish Rebels too to assert the King's Party Which one thing is sufficient evidence how much you are both a Fool and a Knave and how you out-do almost all Mankind in Villany Impudence and Madness who scruple not to implore the Loyalty and Aid of an execrable People devoted to the Slaughter whom the King himself always abhorr'd or so pretended to have any thing to do with by reason of the guilt of so much innocent Blood which they had contracted And that very perfidiousness and Cruelty which he endeavoured as much as he could to conceal and to clear himself from any suspition of you the most villanous of Mortals as fearing neither God nor Man voluntarily and openly take upon your self Go on then undertake the Kings Defence at the Encouragement and by the Assistance of the Irish You take care and so you might well lest any should imagine that you were about to bereave Cicero or Demosthenes of the praise due to their Eloquence by telling us before hand that you conceive you ought not to speak like an Orator 'T is wisely said of a Fool you conceive you ought not to do what is not in your Power to do and who that knows any thing of you ever expects any thing like an Orator from you Who neither uses nor is able to publish any thing that 's Elaborate Distinct or has so much as Sense in it but like a second Crispin or that little Grecian Tzetzes so you do but write a great deal take no pains to write well nor could write any thing well though you took never so much pains This Cause shall be argued say you in the hearing and as it were before the Tribunal of all Mankind That 's what we like so well that we could now wish we had a discreet and intelligent Adversary and not such a hair-brain'd Blunderbuss as you to deal with You conclude very Tragically like Ajax in his Raving I will proclaim to Heaven and Earth the Injustice the Villany the Perfidiousness and Cruelty of these Men and will deliver them over convicted to all Posterity O Flowers that such a witless senseless Bawler one that was born but to spoil or transcribe good Authors should think himself able to writ any thing of his own that will reach Posterity Whom together with his frivolous Scribles the very next Age will bury in Oblivion unless this Defence of the King perhaps may be beholden to the Answer I give to it for being looked into now and then And I would entreat the Illustrious States of Holland to take off their Prohibition and suffer the Book to be publickly sold For when I have detected the Vanity Ignorance and Falshood that it is full of the farther it spreads the more effectually it will be supprest Now let us hear how he Convicts us A DEFENCE OF THE People of England CHAP. I. I Persuade my self Salmasius that you being a vain flashy man are not a little proud of being the King of Great Britain's Defender who himself was stil'd the Defender of the Faith For my part I think you deserve your titles both alike for the King defended the Faith and you have defended him so that betwixt you you have spoil'd both your Causes which I shall make appear throughout the whole ensuing Discourse and particularly in this very Chapter You told us in the 12th Page of your Preface that so good and so just a cause ought not to be embelisht with any flourishes of Rhetorick that the King needed no other defence than by a bare Narrative of his Story and yet in your first Chapter in which you had promised us that bare Narrative you neither tell the Story aright nor do you abstain from making use of all the skill you have in Rhetorick to set it off So that if we must take your own judgment we must believe the King's Cause to be neither good nor just But by the way I would advise you not to have so good an opinion of your self for no body else has so of you as to imagin that you are able to speak well upon any subject who can neither play the part of an Orator nor an Historian nor express your self in a stile that would not be ridiculous even in a Lawyer but like a Mountebank's Jugler with big swelling words in your Preface you rais'd our expectation as if some mighty matter were to ensue in which your design was not so much to introduce a true Narrative of the King's Story as to make your own empty intended flourished go off the better For being now about to give us an account of the matter of fact you find your self encompassed and affrighted with so many Mâ—nstâ—rs of Novelty that y' are at a loss what to say first what next and what last of all I le tell ye what the matter is with you In the first place you find your self affrighted and astonish'd at your own monstrous Lies and then you find that empty head of yours not encompass'd but carried round with so many trifles and fooleries that you not only now do not but never did know what was â—it to â—e spoken and in what method Among the mâ—…y 〈◊〉 that you find in expressing the â—â—inousness of so 〈◊〉 a piece of impiety this one offers iâ— self you say which 〈◊〉 â—…y 〈◊〉 and must often be repeated to wit that the Sâ—◠〈◊〉 self never bâ—hâ—ld a more 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 But by your good leave Sir the Sun has beheld many things that blind Bernard never saw But we are content you should mention the Sun over and over And it will be a piece of Prudence in you so to do For though our wickedness does not require it the coldness of the 〈◊〉 that you are making does The original of Kings you say is as ancient as that of the Sun May the Gods and Goddesses Damasippus bless thee with an everlasting Solstice that thou maist always be warm thou that canst not stir a foot without the Sun Perhaps you would avoid the imputation of being called a Doctor Umbraticus But alas you are in perfect darkness that make no difference betwixt a Paternal power and a Regal and that when you had called Kings Fathers of their Country could fancy that with that Metaphor you had persuaded us that whatever is applicable to a Father is so to a King Alas there 's a great difference betwixt them Our Fathers begot us Our King made not us but we him Nature has given Fathers to us all but we our selves appointed our own King So that the people is not for the King but the King for them We bear with a Father though he be harsh and severe and so we do with
that he might lawfully prey upon mankind bear down all that stood in his way and turn all things up-side down Did the Romans ever maintain as you say they did That any man might do these things suo Jure by vertue of some inherent right in himself Salust indeed makes C. Memmius a Tribune of the people in an invective Speech of his against the pride of the Nobility and their escaping unpunish'd howsoever they misbehaved themselves to use these words viz. to do whatever one has a mind to without fear of Punishment is to be a King This Saying you catch'd hold off thinking it would make for your purpose but consider it a little better and you 'll find your self deceiv'd Does he in that place assert the right of Kings Or does he not blame the common-people and chide them for their sloth in suffering their Nobility to Lord it over them as if they were out of the reach of all Law and in submitting again to that Kingly Tyranny which together with their Kings themselves their Ancestors had lawfully and justly rejected and banish'd from amongst them If you had consulted Tully you would have understood both Salust and Samuel better In his Oration pro C. Rabirio There is none of us ignorant says he of the manner of Kings These are their Lordly dictates Mind what I say and do accordingly Many passages to this purpose he quotes out of Poets and calls them not the right but the custom or the manner of Kings and he says We ought to read and consider them not only for curiosity sake but that we may learn to beware of 'em and avoid ' em You perceive how miserably you 're come off with Salust who though he be as much an enemy to Tyranny as any other Author whatsoever you thought would have Patroniz'd this Tyrannical right that you are establishing Take my word for 't the right of Kings seems to be tottering and even to further its own ruin by relying upon such weak props for its support and by endeavouring to maintain it self by such Examples and Authorities as would hasten its down-fall if it were further off than it is The extremity of right or law you say is the height of injury Summum jus summa injuria this saying is verified most properly in Kings who when they go to the utmost of their right fall into those courses in which Samuel makes the Right of Kings to consist And 't is a miserable Right which when you have said all you can for you can no otherwise defend than by confessing that it is the greatest injury that may be The extremity of Right or Law is said to be when a man ties himself up to Niceties dwells upon Letters and Syllables and in the mean time neglects the intent and equity of the Law or when a written Law is cunningly and maliciously interpreted this Cicero makes to have been the rise of that common saying But since 't is certain that all right flows from the fountain of Justice so that nothing can possibly be any man's right that is not just 't is a most wicked thing in you to affirm that for a King to be unjust rapacious tyrannical and as ill as the worst of 'em ever were is according to the right of Kings and to tell us that a Holy Prophet would have persuaded the people to such a senseless thing For whether written or unwritten whether extreme or remiss what Right can any Man have to be injurious Which lest you should confess to be true of other Men but not of Kings I have one Man's Authority to oppose you with who I think was a King himself and professeth that that Right of Kings that you speak of is odious both to God and himself It is in the 94th Psalm Shall the throne of iniquity have fellowship with thee that frameth mischief by a law Be not therefore so injurious to God as to ascribe this Doctrine to him viz. that all manner of wicked and flagitious Actions are but the Right of Kings since himself tells us that he abhors all fellowship with wicked Princes for this very reason Because under pretence of Soveraignty they create Misery and Vexation to their Subjects Neither bring up a false Accusation against a Prophet of God for by making him to teach us in this place what the Right of Kings is you do not produce the right Samuel but such another empty Shadow as was raised by the Witch of Endor Tho for my own part I verily believe that that infernal Samuel would not have been so great a Lyar but that he would have confess'd that what you call the Right of Kings is Tyranny We read indeed of Impieties countenanced by Law Jus datum sceleri you your self confess that they are bad Kings that have made use of this boundless License of theirs to do every thing Now this Right that you have introduc'd for the Destruction of Mankind not proceeding from God as I have prov'd it does not must needs come from the Devil and that it does really so will appear more clearly hereafter By vertue of this Liberty say you Princes may if they will And for this you pretend to have Cicero's Authority I 'm always willing to mention your Authorities for it generally happens that the very Authors you quote them out of give you an Answer themselves Hear else what Cicero says in his 4th Phillippicke What cause of War can be more just and warrantable than to avoid Slavery For tho a People may have the good fortune to live under a Gentle Master yet they are in a miserable Condition whose Prince may Tyrannize over them if he will May that is can has Power enough so to do If he meant it of his Right he would contradict himself and make that an unjust Cause of War which himself had affirm'd with the same Breath to be a most just one It is not therefore the Right of all Kings that you describe but the Injuriousness and Force and Violence of some Then you tell us what private men may do A private Man say you may Lie may be Ungrateful and so may Kings but what then May they therefore Plunder Murder Ravish without controul 'T is equally prejudicial and destructive to the Common-wealth whether it be their own Prince or a Robber or a Foreign Enemy that Spoils Massacres and Enslaves them And questionless being both alike Enemies of Humane Society the one as well as the other may lawfully be oppos'd and punish'd and their own Prince the rather because he tho raised to that Dignity by the Honours that his People have conferr'd upon him and being bound by his Oath to defend the Publick Safety betrays it notwithstanding all At last you grant That Moses prescribes Laws according to which the King that the People of Israel should chuse ought to Govern tho different from this Right that Samuel proposeth which words contain a double Contradiction to what you
rejoyce that he is so pray that his Kingdom may come for he is worthy Nor is there any other either equal or next to him And yet a Kingly Government being put into the hands of unworthy and undeserving persons as most commonly it is may well be thought to have done more harm than good to Mankind Nor does it follow for all this that all Kings as such are Tyrants But suppose it did as for argument sake I 'le allow it does least you should think I 'm too hard with ye Make you the best use of it you can Then say you God himself may properly be said to be the King of Tyrants nay himself the worst of all Tyrants If the first of these conclusions does not follow another does which may be drawn from most parts of your Book viz. That you perpetually contradict not only the Scriptures but your own self For in the very last fore-going Period you had affirmed that God was the King of all things having himself created them Now he created Tyrants and Devils and consequently by your own reason is the King of such The 2'd of these Conclusions we detest and wish that blasphemous Mouth of yours were stopt up with which you affirm God to be the worst of Tyrants If he be as you often say he is the King and Lord of such Nor do you much advantage your Cause by telling us that Moses was a King and had the absolute and supream power of a King For we could be content that any other were so that could refer our matters to God as Moses did and consult with him about our affairs Exod. 18. v. 19. But neither did Moses notwithstanding his great familiatity with God ever assume a Liberty of doing what he would himself What says he of himself The people come unto me to enquire of God They came not then to receive Moses his own Dictates and Commands Then says Jethro ver 19. Be thou for the people to God-ward that thou mayst bring their causes unto God And Moses himself says Deut. 4. v 5. I have taught you statutes and judgments even as the Lord my God commanded me Hence it is that he is said to have been faithful in all the hause of God Numb 12 v. 7. So that the Lord Jehovah himself was the people's King and Moses no other than as it were an Interpreter or a Messenger betwixt him and them Nor can you without In piety and Sacriledg transfer this absolute supream Power and Authority from God to a man not having any Warrant from the word of God so to do which Moses used only as a Deputy or Substitute to God under whose Eye and in whose presence himself and the people always were But now for an aggravation of your wickedness though here you make Moses to have exercis'd an absolute and unlimitted Power in your apparat ad primat Page 230. You say that he together with the seventy elders ruled the people and that himself was the chief of the people but not their Master If Moses therefore were a King as certainly he was and the best of Kings and had a Supream and Legal Power as you say he had and yet neither was the people's Master nor Govern'd them alone then according to you Kings though indued with the Supream Power are not by Vertue of that Sovereign and Kingly Right of theirs Lords over the people nor ought to Govern them alone much less according to their own Will and Pleasure After all this you have the Impudence to feign a command from God to that people to set up a King over them as soon as they should be possessed of the holy land Deut. 17. For you craftily leave out the former words and shalt say I will set a King over me c. And now call to mind what you said before Page 42d and what I said I should have occasion to make use of viz. That the power was then in the people and that they were entirely free What follows argues you either Mad or irreligious take whether you lift God say you having so long before appointed a Kingly Government as best and most proper for that people what shall we say to Samuel's opposing it and God's own acting as if himself were against it How do these things agree He finds himself caught and observe now with how great malice against the Prophet and impiety against God he endeavours to disentangle himself We must consider says he That Samuel's own Sons then Judged the people and the people rejected them because of their corruption now Samuel was loth his Sons should be lay'd aside and God to gratify the Prophet intimated to him as if himself were not very well pleased with it Speak out ye wretch and never mince the matter You mean God dealt deceitfully with Samuel and he with the people It is not your Advocate but your self that are Frantick and Distracted who cast off all reverence to God Almighty so you may but seem to Honour the King Would Samuel prefer the Interest of his Sons and their Ambition and their Covetousness before the general good of all the people when they asked a thing that would be good and profitable for them Can we think that he would impose upon them by cunning and subtilty and make them believe things that were not Or if we should suppose all this true of Samuel would God himself countenance and gratify him in it would he dissemble with the people So that either that was not the right of Kings which Samuel taught the people or else that right by the Testimony both of God and the Prophet was an evil thing was burdensom injurious unprofitable and chargeable to the Common-wealth Or Lastly which must not be admitted God and the Prophet â—eceiv'd the People God frequently protests that he was extreamly displeas'd with them for asking a King v. 7th They have not rejected thee but they have rejected me that I should not reign over them As if it were a kind of Idolatry to ask a King that would even suffer himself to be ador'd and assume almost Divine Honour to himself And certainly they that subject themselves to a worldly Master and set him above all Laws come but a little short of chusing a strange God And a strange one it commonly is brutish and void of all sense and reason So 1st of Sam. Chap. 10th v. 19th And ye have this day rejected your God who himself saved you out of all your adversities and your tribulation and ye have said unto him Nay but set a king over us c. and Chap 12th v. 12th Ye said unto me Nay but a king shall reign over us when the Lord your God was your king and v. the 17th See that your wickedness is great that ye have done in the sight the Lord in asking you a king And Hosea speaks contemptibly of the King Chap. 13. v. 10th 11th I will be thy king where is any other
that may save in all thy cities and thy judges of whom thou saidest give me a king and princes I gave thâ—â— a king in mine anger and took him 〈…〉 my wrath And Gidem that warlike Judg that was greater than a King I will not rule over you says he 〈…〉 shall my son rule over you the Lord shall rule over you Judges Chap the 8th Intimating thereby that it is not fit for a man but for God only to exercise Dominion over men And hence Josephus in his Book against Aâ—… an Egyptian Grammarian and a â—oulmouth'd fellow like you calls the Commonwealth of the Hebrews a Theocracy because the principality was in God only In Isaiah Chap. 26. v. 13. The people in their repentance complain that it had been mischievous to them that other Lords besides God himself had had Dominion over them All which places prove clearly that God gave the Israelites a King in his anger but now who can forbear laughing at the use you make of Abimelech's story Of whom it is said when he was kill'd partly by a woman that hurl'd a piece of a Mill-stone upon him and partly by his own Armour-Bearer that God rendred the wickedness of Abimelech This History say you proves strongly that God only is the Judge and Avenger of Kings Yea if this Argument holds he is the only Judge and Punisher of Tyrants Villanous Rascals and Bastards whoever can get into the Saddle whether by right or by wrong has thereby obtain'd a Soveraign Kingly right over the people is out of all danger of punishment all inferior Magistrates must lay down their Arms at his feet the people must not dare to mutter But what if some great notorious robber had perished in War as Abimelech did would any man infer from thence That God only is the Judge and Punisher of High-way men Or what if Abimelech had been condemn'd by the Law and died by an Executioner's hand would not God then have rendred his wickedness You never read that the Judges of the Children of Israel were ever proceeded against according to Law And yet you confess That where the Government is an Aristocracy the Prince if there be any may and ought to be call'd in question if he break the Laws This in your 47th Page And why may not a Tyrant as well be proceeded against in a Kingly Government Why because God rendred the wickedness of Abimelech So did the Women and so did his own Armour-bearer over both which he pretended to a right of Soveraignty And what if the Magistrates had rendred his wickedness Do not they bear the Sword for that very purpose for the punishment of Malefactors Having done with his powerful argument from the History of Abimelech's death he bâ—takes himself as his custom is to Slanders and Calumnies nothing but dirt and filth comes from him but for those things that he promis'd to make appear he hath not prov'd any one of them either from the Scriptures or from the Writings of the Rabbins He alledges no reason why Kings should be above all Laws and they only of all mortal men exempt from punishment if they deserve it He falls foul upon those very Authors and Authorities that he makes use of and by his own Discourse demonstrates the truth of the opinion that he argues against And perceiving that he is like to do but little good with his arguments he endeavours to bring an odium upon us by loading us with slanderous accusations as having put to death the most Vertuous innocent Prince that ever reign'd VVas King Solomon says he better than King Charles the First I confess some have ventur'd to compare his Father King James with Solomon nay to make King James the better Gentleman of the 〈◊〉 Solomon was David's Son David had been Sauâ—… â—…n but king James was the Son of the End of Darly who as â—uchanan tells us because Dâ—… the Musitian get into the Queen's Bed-Chamber at an unseasonable time kill'd him a little after he could not get to him then because he had Bolted the Door on the inside So that King James being the Son of an Earâ— was the better Gentleman and was frequently called a second Solomon though it is not very certain that himself was not the Son of David the Musitian too But how could it ever come into your head to make a comparison betwixt King Câ—ries and Solomon For that very King Charles whom you praise thus to the sky that very man's obâ—…acy and covetousness and cruelty his hard usage of all good and honest men the Wars that he rais'd the Spoilings and Plunderings and Conflagrations that he occasioned and the death of innumerable of his Subjects that he was the cause of does his Son Charles at this very time whilest I 'm a writing confess and bewail in the Stool of Repentance in Scotland and renounces there that Kingly right that you assert but since you delight in Parallels let 's compare King Charles and King Solomon together a little Solomon began his reign with the death of his Brother who had justly deserved it King Charles began his with his Father's Funeral I do not say with his Murder and yet all the marks and tokens of Poyson that may be appeared in his dead body but the suspition lighted upon the Duke of Buckingham only whom the 〈◊〉 notwithstanding cleared to the Parliament though he had killed the King and his Father and not only soâ— but he dissolved the Parliament lest the matter should be enquired into Solomon oppressed the people with heavy Taxes but he spent that â—…upon the Temple of God and in raising other publick Buildings King Charles spent his in Extravag 〈◊〉 Solomon was enticed to Idolatry by many Wives This man by one Solomon though he were seduced himself we read not that he seduced others but King Charles seduced and enticed others not only by large and ample rewards to corrupt the Church but by his Edicts and Ecclesiastical Constitutions he compelled them to set up Altars which all Protestants abhor and to bow down to Crucifixes painted over them on the Wall But yet for all this Solomon was not condemned to die Nor does it follow because he was not that therefore he ought not to have been Perhaps there were many Circumstances that made it then not expedient But not long after the people both by words and actions made appear what they took to be their right when Ten Tribes of Twelve revolted from his Son and if he had not saved himself by flight it is very likely they would have stoned him notwithstanding his Threats and big swelling words CHAP. III. HAving proved sufficiently that the Kings of the Jews were subject to the same Laws that the people were That there are no exceptions made in Scripture That 't is a most false assertion grounded upon no reason nor warranted by any Authority to say That Kings may do what they list with Impunity That God has exempted them
endeavoured to suppress and obscure was then brought to light by the furious passion or to speak more mildly by the ignorant indiscrâ—â—t zeal of one of them After you have displaâ—'d Ambrose his ignorance you show your own or rather vent a Heresie in affirming point blank That under the old Testament there was no such thing as forgiveness of sins upon the account of Christ's sufferings since David confess'd his transgression saying Against thee only have I sinned P. 68. 'T is the Orthodox tenet that there never was any remission of sins but by the blood of the Lamb that was slain from the beginning of the world I know not whose Disciple you are that set up for a broacher of new Heresies but certain I am that that great Divine's Disciple whom you are so angry with did not mistake himself when he said that any one of David's Subjects might have said against thee only have I sinned as properly and with as much right as David himself Then you quote St. Augustine and produce a company of Hipponensian Divines What you alledg out of St. Austin makes not at all against us We confess that as the Prophet Daniel has it it 's God that changeth times sets up one Kingdom and pulls down another we only desire to have it allow'd us that he makes use of men as his Instruments If God alone gave a Kingdom to King Charles God alone has taken it from him again and given it to the Parliament and to the People If therefore our Allegiance was due to King Charles because God had given him a Kingdom for the same reason it is now due to the present Magistracy For your self confess that God has given our Magistra es such power as he useth to give to wicked Princes for the punishment of the Nation And the consequence of this will be that according to your own opinion our present Magistrates being rais'd and appointed by God cannot lawfully be deposed by any but God himself Thus you overthrow the opinion you pretend to maintain which is a thing very frequent with 〈◊〉 Your Apology for the King carries it's deaths-wound in it You have attained to such a prodigious degree of Madness and Stupidity as to prove it unlawful upon any account whatsoever to lift up ones finger against Magistrates and with the very next breath to affirm that it 's the duty of their Sujects to rise up in Rebellion against them You tell us that St. Jerom calls Ismael that slew Gedalia a Parricide or Traytor And it is very true that he was so For Gedalia was Deputy Governour of Judaea a good man and slain by Ismael without any cause The same Author in his Comment upon the Book of Ecclesiastes says that Solomon's command to keep the King's Commandment is the same with St. Paul's Doctrine upon the same subject And deserves commendation for having made a more moderate Construction of that Text than most of his Contemporaries You say you will forbear enquiring into the Sentiments of Learned Men that lived since St. Augustine's time but to shew that you had rather dispence with a lie than not quote any Author that you think makes for you in the very next period but one you produce the Authorities of Isidore Gregory and Otho Spanish and Dutch Authors that liv'd in the most barbarous and ignorant ages of all whose Authorities if you knew how much we despise you would not have told a lye to have quoted them But would you know the reason why he dares not come so low as to the present times Why he does as it were hide himself and disapear when he comes towards our own times The reason is Because he knows full well that as many Eminent Divines as there are of the Reformed Church so many Adversaries he would have to encounter Let him take up the Cudgels if he thinks fit he will quickly find himself run down with innumerable Authorities out of Luther Zuinglius Calvin Bucer Martyr Paraeus and the rest I could oppose you with Testimonies out of Divines that have flourished even in Leyden Though that famous University and Renowned Commonwealth which has been as it were a Sanctuary for Liberty those Fountains and Streams of all Polite Learning have not yet been able to wash away that slavish rust that sticks to you and infuse a little humanity into you Finding your self destitute of any assistance or help from Orthodox Protestant Divines you have the impudence to betake your self to the Sorbonists whose Colledge you know is devoted to the Romish Religion and consequently but of very weak authority amongst Protestants We are willing to deliver so wicked an assertor of Tyranny as you to be drown'd in the Sorbon as being asham'd to own so despicable a slave as you show your self to be by maintaining that the whole body of a Nation is not equal in power to the most slothful degenerate Prince that may be You labour in vain to lay that upon the Pope which all free Nations and all Orthodox Divines own and assert But the Pope and his Clergy when they were in a low condition and but of small account in the world were the first Authors of this pernicious absurd Doctrine of yours and when by preaching such Doctrine they had gotten power into their own hands they became the worst of Tyrants themselves Yet they engaged all Princes to themselves by the closest tye imaginable perswading the world that was now besotted with their Superstition that it was unlawful to Depose Princes though never so bad unless the Pope dispensed with their Allegiance to them by absolving them from their Oaths But you avoid Orthodox Writers and endeavour to burden the truth with prejudice and calumny by making the Pope the first assertor of what is a known and common received opinion amongst them which if you did not do it cunningly you would make your self appear to be neither Papist nor Protestant but a kind of a Mongrel Idumean Herodian For as they of old adored one most inhumane bloody Tyrant for the Mâ—ssias so you would have the world fall down and worship all You boast that you have confirm'd your opinion by the Testimonies of the Fathers that flourished in the four first Centuries whose Writings only are Evangelical and according to the truth of the Christian Religion This man is past all shame how many things did they preach how many things have they published which Christ and his Apostles never taught How many things are there in their Writings in which all Protestant Divines differ from them But what is that opinion that you have confirm'd by their Authorities Why that evil Princes are appointed by God Allow that as all other pernicious and destructive things are What then why that therefore they have no Judge but God alone that they are above all humane Laws that there is no Law written or unwritten no Law of Nature nor of God to call them to account before their own
people had wash'd off that anointing of his whether Sacred or Civil with the Blood of his own Subjects I confess that those Kings whom God by his Prophets anointed to be Kings or appointed to some special service as he did Cyrus Isa 44. may not improperly be called the Lord 's Anointed but all other Princes according to the several ways of their coming to the Government are the People 's Anointed or the Army's or many times the Anointed of their own Faction only But taking it for granted That all Kings are God's Anointed you can never prove That therefore they are above all Laws and not to be called in question what Villanies soever they commit What if David laid a charge upon himself and other private persons not to stretch forth their hands against the Lord 's Anointed Does not God himself command Princes not so much as to touch his anointed Which were no other than his people Psal 105. He preferred that Anointing wherewith his People were Anointed before that of Kings if any such thing were Would any man offer to infer from this place of the Psalmist That Believers are not to be called in question tho they offend against the Laws because God commands Princes not to touch his Anointed King Solomon was about to put to death Abiathar the Priest tho he were God's Anointed too and did not spare him because of his Anointing but because he had been his Father's Friend If that Sacred and Civil Anointing wherewith the High-Priest of the Jews was anointed whereby he was not only constituted High-Priest but a Temporal Magistrate in many cases did not exempt him from the Penalty of the Laws how comes a Civil Anointing only to exempt a Tyrant But you say Saul was a Tyrant and worthy of death What then It does not follow that because he deserved it that David in the circumstances he was then under had power to put him to death without the People's Authority or the command of the Magistracy But was Saul a Tyrant I wish you would say so indeed you do so though you had said before in your Second Book page 32. That he was no Tyrant but a good King and chosen of God Why should false Accusers and Men guilty of Forgery be branded and you escape without the like ignominious Mark For they practice their Villanies with less Treachery and Deceit than you write and Treat of matters of the greatest moment Saul was a good King when it serv'd your turn to have him so and now he 's a Tyrant because it suits with your present purpose But 't is no wonder that you make a Tyrant of a good King for your Principles look as if they were invented for no other design than to make all good Kings so But yet David tho he would not put to Death his Father-in-Law for Causes and Reasons that we have nothing to do withal yet in his own Defence he raised an Army took and possessed Cities that belong'd to Saul and would have defended Kâ—ilah against the King's Forces had he not understood that the Citizens would be false to him Suppose Saul had besieged the Town and himself had been the first that had scal'd the Walls do you think David would presently have thrown down his Arms and have betray'd all those that assisted him to his anointed Enemy I believe not What reason have we to think David would have stuck to do what we have done who when his Occasions and Circumstances so required proffered his Assistance to the Philistines who were then the professed Enemies of his Country and did that against Saul which I am sure we should never have done against our Tyrant I 'm weary of mentioning your Lies and asham'd of them You say t is a Maxim of the English That Enemies are rather to be spared than Friends and that therefore we conceived we ought not to spare our King's Life because he had been our Friend You impudent Lyar what Mortal ever heard this Whimsy before you invented it But we 'll excuse it You could not bring in that thread-bare Flourish of our being more fierce than our own Mastiffs which now comes in the fifth time and will as oft again before we come to the end of your Book without some such Introduction We are not so much more fierce than our own Mastiffs as you are more hungry than any Dog whasoever who return so greedily to what you have vomitted up so often Then you tell us That David commanded the Amalekite to be put to Death who pretended to haveÌ„ killed Saul But that Instance neither in respect of the Fact nor the Person has any Affinity with what we are discoursing of I do not well understand what cause David had to be so severe up-upon that Man for pretending to have hastned the King's Death and in effect but to have put him out of his pain when he was dying unless it were to take away from the Israelites all Suspicion of his own having been instrumental in it whom they might look upon as one that had revolted to the Philistines and was part of their Army Just such another Action as this of David's do all Men blame in Domitian who put to Death Epaphroditus because he had helped Nero to kill himself After all this as another instance of your Impudence you call him not only the anointed of the Lord but the Lord 's Christ who a little before you had said was a Tyrant and acted by the impulse of some Evil Spirit Such mean thoughts you have of that Reverend Name that you are not asham'd to give it to a Tyrant whom you your self confess to have been possessed with the Devil Now I come to that President from which every Man that is not blind must needs infer the Right of the People to be Superior to that of Kings When Solomon was dead the People Assembled themselves at Sichem to make Rehoboam King Thither himself went as one that stood for the place that he might not seem to claim the Succession as his Inheritance the same Right over a freeborn People that every Man has over his Fathers Sheep and Oxen. The People propose Conditions upon which they were willing to admit him to the Government He desires three days time to advise he consults with the old Men they tell him no such thing as that he had an absolute Right to succeed but persuade him to comply with the People and speak them fair it being in their Power whether he should Reign or not Then he adviseth with the young Men that were brought up-with him they as if Salmasius's Phrensy had taken them thunder this Right of Kings into his Ears persuade him to threaten the People with Whips and Scorpions And he answered the People as they advised him When all Israel saw that the King hearkned not to them then they openly protest the Right of the People and their own Liberty What portion have we in David To thy
forsaken God And we do not find that Azarias his Son prosecuted those that had cut off his Father You quote a great many frivolous passages out of the Rabbins to prove that the Kings of the Jews were Superior to the Sanhedrim You do not consider Zedekia's own words Jerem. 38. The King is not he that can do any thing against you So that this was the Princes own stile Thus he confessed himself Inferior to the great Council of the Realm Perhaps say you he meant that he durst not deny them any thing for fear of Sedition But what does your perhaps signify whose most positive asserting any thing is not worth a Louse For nothing in Nature can be more Fickle and Inconstant than you are How oft have you appear'd in this Discourse inconsistent with your self unsaying with one Breath what you had said with another Here again you make Comparisons betwixt King Charles and some of the good Kings of Judah You speak contemptibly of David as if he were not worthy to come in Competition with him Consider David say you an Adulterer a Murderer King Charles was guilty of no such Crimes Solomon his Son who was accounted wise c. Who can with Patience hear this filthy rascally Fool speak so irreverently of Persons eminent both in Greatness and Piety Dare you compare King David with King Charles a most Religious King and Prophet with a Superstitious Prince and who was but a Novice in the Christian Religion a most prudent wise Prince with a weak one a Valiant Prince with a Cowardly one finally a most just Prince with a most unjust one Have you the impudence to commend his Chastity and Sobriety who is known to have committed all manner of Leudness in company with his Confident the Duke of Buckingham It were to no purpose to enquire into the private Actions of his Life who publickly at Plays would Embrace and Kiss the Ladies lasciviously and handle Virgins and Matrons Breasts not to mention the rest I advise you therefore you Counterfeit Plutarch to abstain from such like Parallels lest I be forced to publish those things concerning King Charles which I am willing to conceal Hitherto we have entertain'd our selves with what the People of the Jews have acted or attempted against Tyrants and by what Right they did it in those times when God himself did immediately as it were by his Voice from Heaven govern their Commonwealth The Ages that succeeded do not afford us any Authority as from themselves but confirm us in our Opinion by their imitating the Actions of their Fore-fathers For after the Babylonish Captivity when God did not give any new command concerning the Crown tho the Royal Line was not extinct we find the People returning to the old Mosaical Form of Government again They were one while Tributaries to Antiochus King of Syria yet when he injoyn'd them things that were contrary to the Law of God they resisted him and his Deputies under the Conduct of their Priests the Maccabees and by force regain'd their former Liberty After that whoever was accounted most worthy of it had the Principality conferr'd upon him Till at last Hircanus the Son of Simon the Brother of Judah the Maccabee having spoiled David's Sepulchre entertain'd foreign Soldiers and began to Invest the Priesthood with a kind of Regal Power After whose time his Son Aristobulus was the first that assum'd the Crown he was a Tyrant indeed and yet the People stirred not against him which is no great Wonder for he reigned but one year And he himself being overtaken with a grievous Disease and repenting of his own Cruelty and Wickedness desired nothing more than to dye and had his wish His Brother Alexander succeeded him and against him you say the People raised no Insurrection tho he were a Tyrant too And this lie might have gone down with us if Josepbus's History had not been extant We should then have had no memory of those times but what your Josippus would afford us out of whom you transcribe a few senseless and useless Apothegms of the Pharisees The History is thus Alexander Administred the Publick Affairs ill both in War and Peace and tho he kept in pay great numbers of Pisidians and Cilicians yet could he not protect himself from the Rage of the People but whilest he was Sacrificing they fell upon him and had almost smother'd him with Boughs of Palm-trees and Citron-trees afterward the whole Nation made War upon him six years during which time when many thousands of the Jews had been slain and he himself being at length desirous of Peace demanded of them what they would have him do to satisfy them they told him nothing could do that but his Blood nay that they should hardly pardon him after his Death This History you perâ—… was not for your purpose and so you put it 〈◊〉 with a few â—harisaical Sentences when it had been much better either to have let it quite alone 〈◊〉 to have given a true Relation of it but you trust to â—ies more than to the Truth of your Cause Even 〈◊〉 eight hundred Pharisees whom he commanded to be crucisied were of their number that had taken up Arms against him And they with the rest of the People had solemnly protested That if they could subdue the Kings Forces and get his Person into their Power they would put him to Death After the Death of Alexander his Wife Alexandra took the Government upon her as Athalia had formerly done not according to Law for you have confessed that the Laws of the Jews admitted not a Female to wear the Crown but she got it partly by force for she maintain'd an Army of Foreigners and partly by favour for she had brought over the Pharisees to her Interest which sort of Men were of the greaten Authority with the People Them she had made her own by putting the Power into their hands and retaining to her self only the Name 〈◊〉 as the Scotch Presbyterians lately allowed Chaâ—… the Name of King but upon Condition that 〈◊〉 would let them be King in effect After the 〈◊〉 of Alexandra Hyrcanus and Aristobulus her Sons contended for the Sovereignty Aristobulus was 〈◊〉 industrious and having a greater Party forced his Elder Brother out of the Kingdom A while after when Pompey passed through Syria in his return from the Mithridatick War the Jews supposing they had now an opportunity of regaining their Liberty by referring their Cause to him dispatcht an Embassy to him in their own Names they renounce both the Brothers complain that they had enslaved them Pompey deposed Aristobulus leaves the Priesthood and such a Principality as the Laws allowed to Hyrcanus the Elder From that time forward he was called High Priest and Ethnarcha After these times in the Reign of Archelaus the Son of Herod the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 fifty Ambassadors to Augustus Caesar accused 〈◊〉 that was dead and Archelaus his Son that then Reigned they deposed him as
wherever the Laws are set at naught the same dictate of nature must necessarily prompt us to betake our selves to Force again To be of this opinion says Cicero pro Sestio is a sign of Wisdom to put it in practice argues Courage and Resolution to do both is the effect of Vertue in its perfection Let this stand then as a setled Maxim of the Law of Nature never to be shaken by any Artifices of Flatterers That the Senate or the people are superior to Kings be they good or bad Which is but what you your self do in effect confess when you tell us That the Authority of Kings was derived from the people For that power which they transferred to Princes doth yet naturally or as I may say virtually reside in themselves notwithstanding for so natural causes that produce any effect by a certain eminency of operation do always retain more of their own vertue and energy than they impart nor do they by communicating to others exhaust themselves You see the closer we keep to Nature the more evidently does the peoples power appear to be above that of the Prince And this is likewise certain That the people do not freely and of choice settle the Government in their King absolutely so as to give him a Propriety in it nor by Nature can do so but only for the Publick Safety and Liberty which when the King ceaseth to take care of then the people in effect have given him nothing at all For Nature says the people gave it him to a particular end and purpose which end if neither Nature nor the People can attain the peoples Gift becomes no more valid than any other void Covenant or Agreement These Reasons prove very fully That the People are Superior to the King and so your greatest and most 〈◊〉 Argument That a King cannot be judged by his 〈◊〉 because he has no Peer in his Kingdom nor any Superior falls to the ground For you take that for granted which we by no means allow In a popular State say you the Magistrates being appointed by the people may likewise be punished for their Crimes by the people In an Aâ—…cracy the Senators may be punished by their Collegues But 't is a 〈◊〉 thing to proceed criminally against a King in his own Kingdom and make him plead for his life What can you conclude from hence but that they who set up Kings over them are the most miserable and most silly people in the world But I paay what 's the reason why the people may not punish a King that becomes a Malefactor as well as they may popular Magistrates and Senators in an Aristocracy Do you think that all they that live under a Kingly Government were so strangely in love with Slavery as when they might be free to chuse Vassalage and to put themselves all and entirely under the dominion of one man who often happens to be an ill man and often a fool so as whatever cause might be to leave themselves no 〈◊〉 in no relief from the Laws nor the dictates of Nature against the Tyranny of a most outragious Master when such a one happens Why do they then tender conditions to their Kings when they first enter upon their Government and prescribe Laws for them to govern by Do they do this to be trampled upon the more and be the more laughed to scorn Can it â—e imagined that a whole people would ever so 〈◊〉 themselves depart from their own interest to that degree be so wanting to themselves as to place all their hopes in one man and he very often the most vain person of them all To what end do they require an Oath of their Kings Not to act any 〈◊〉 contrary to Law We must suppose them to do this that poor creatures they may learn to their â—…rrow That Kings only may commit Perjury with impunity This is what your own wicked Conclusions hold forth If a King that is elected promise any thing to his people upon Oath which if he would not have swâ—rn to perhaps they would not have chose him yet if he refuse to perform that promise he falls not under the peoples censure Nay tho he swear to his Subjects at his Election That he will administer Justice to them according to the Laws of the Kingdom and that if he do not they shall be discharged of their Allegiance and himself ipso facto cease to be their King yet if he break this oath 't is God and not man that must require it of him I have transcribed these lines not for their Elegance for they are barbarously expressed nor because I think there needs any answer to them for they answer themselves they explode and damn themselves by their notorious falshood and loathsomness but I did it to recommend you to Kings for your great Merits that among so many places as there are at Court they may put you into some Preferment or Office that may be fit for you some are Princes Secretaries some their Cup-bearers some Masters of the Revels I think you had best be Master of the Perjuries to some of them You sha'nt be Master of the Ceremonies you are too much a Clown for that but their Treachery and Perfidiousness shall be under your care But that men may see that you are both a Fool and a Knave to the highest degree let us consider these last assertions of yours a little more narrowly A King say you tho he swear to his Subjects at his Election that he will govern according to Law and that if he do not they shall be discharged of their Allegiance and he himself ipso facto cease to be their King yet can he not be deposed or punished by them Why not a King I pray as well as popular Magistrates Because in a popular State the People do not transfer all their Power to the Magistrates And do they in the Case that you have put vest it all in the King when they place him in the Government upon those terms expresly to hold it no longer than he useth it well So that it is evident that a King sworn to observe the Laws if he transgress them may be punished and deposed as well as popular Magistrates So that you can make no more use of that invincible Argument of the Peoples tranferring all their Right and Power into the Prince you your self have battered it down with your own Engines Hear now another most powerful and invincible Argument of his why Subjects cannot judge their Kings because he is bound by no Law being himself the sole Lawgiver Which having been proved already to be most false this great reason comes to nothing as well as the former But the reason why Princes have but seldom been proceeded against for personal and private Crimes as Whoredom and Adultery and the like is not because they could not justly be punished even for such but lest the People should receive more prejudice through disturbances that
out of The King you say is supposed not capable of committing any crime because no punishment is consequential upon any crime of his Whoever therefore is not punisht offends not it is not the theft but the punishment that makes the thief Salmasius the Grammarian commits no Soloecisms now because he is from under the Ferular when you have overthrown the Pope let these for God's sake be the Canons of your Pontificate or at least your Indulgences whether you shall chuse to be called the High Priest St. â—yranny or of St. Slavery I pass by the Reproachful language which towards the latter end of the Chapter you give the State of the Commonwealth and the Church of England 't is common to such as you are you contemptible Varlet to rail at those things most that are most praise-worthy But that I may not seem to have asserted any thing rashly concerning the Right of the Kings of England or rather concerning the Peoples Right with respect to their Princes I will now alledg out of our ancient Histories a few things indeed of many but such as will make it evident that the English lately tried their King according to the setled Laws of the Realm and the Customs of their Ancestors After the Romans quitted this Island the Britains for about forty years were sui Juris and without any Kings at all Of whom those they first set up some they put to death And for that Gildas reprehends them not as you do for killing their Kings but for killing them uncondemned and to use his own words Non pro veri examinatione without inquiring into the matter of fact Vortigerne was for his Incestuous Marriage with his own Daughter condemn'd as Nennius informs us the most ancient of all our Historians next to Gildas by St. German and a General Council of the Britains and his Son Vortimer set up in his stead This came to pass not long after St. Augustine's death which is enough to discover how â—utilous you are to say as you have done that it was a Pope and Zachary by name who first held the lawfulness of judging Kings About the year of our Lord 600 Morcantius who then Reign'd in Wales was by Oudeceus Bishop of Landaff condemn'd to Exile for the Murther of his Uncle though he got the Sentence off by bestowing some Lands upon the Church Come we now to the Saxons whose Laws we have and therefore I shall quote none of their Presidents Remember that the Saxons were of a German Extract who neither invested their Kings with any absolute unlimited power and consulted in a Body of the more weighty affairs of Government whence we may perceive that in the time of our Saxon Ancestors Parliaments the name it self only excepted had the Supreme Authority The name they gave them was Councils of Wise-men and this in the Reign of Ethelbert of whom Bede says That he made Laws in imitation of the Roman Laws cum concilio sapientum by the advice or in a Council of his Wise-men So Edwyn King of Northumberland and Ina King of the VVest-Saxons having consulted with their VVise-men and the Elders of the people made new Laws Other Laws K. Alfred made by the advice in like manner of his Wise-men and he says himself That it was by the consent of them all that they were commanded to be observed From these and many other like places it is as clear as the Sun that chosen Men even from amongst the Common People were Members of the Supreme Councils unless we must believe that no Men are wise but the Nobility We have likewise a very Ancient Book called the Mirror of Justices in which we are told That the Saxons when they first subdued the Brittains and chose themselves Kings required an Oath of them to submit to the Judgment of the Law as much as any of their Subjects Cap. 1. Sect. 2. In the same place 't is said that it is but just that the King have his Peers in Parliament to take Cognizance of wrongs done by the King or the Queen and that there was a Law made in King Alored's time that Parliaments should be holden twice a year at London or oftner if need were Which Law when through neglect it grew into disuse was revived by two Statutes in King Edward the Third's time And in another ancient Manuscript called Modus tenendi Parliamenta we read thus If the King dissolve the Parliament before they have dispatcht the business for which the Council was summon'd he is guilty of Perjury and shall be reputed to have broken his Coronation Oath For how can he be said to grant those good Laws which the people chuse as he is sworn to do if he hinders the People from chusing them either by summoning Parliaments seldomer or by dissolving them sooner than the Publick Affairs require or admit And that Oath which the Kings of England take at their Coronation has always been looked upon by our Lawyers as a most sacred Law And what remedy can be found to obviate the great Dangers of the whole State which is the very end of summoning Parliaments if that Great and August Assembly may be dissolved at the pleasure many times of a silly head-strong King To absent himself from them is certainly less than to dissolve them and yet by our Laws as that Modus lays them down the King neither can nor ought to absent himself from his Parliament unless he be really indisposed in Health nor then neither till twelve of the Peers have been with him to inspect his Body and give the Parliament an account of his Indisposition Is this like the Carriage of Servants to a Master On the other hand the House of Commons without whom there can be no Parliament held tho summoned by the King may withdraw and having made a Secession expostulate with the King concerning Male-administration as the same Book has it But which is the greatest thing of all amongst the Laws of King Edward commonly called the Confessor there is one very excellent relating to the Kingly Office which Office if the King do not discharge as he ought Then says the Law He shall not retain so much as the Name of a King And lest these words should not be sufficiently understood the Example of Chilperic King of France is subjoyn'd whom the People for that Cause deposed And that by this Law a wicked King is liable to Punishment that Sword of King Edward called Curtana denotes to us which the Earl of Chester used to carry in the Solemn Procession at a Coronation A token says Mathew Paris that he has Authority by Law to punish the King if he will not do his Duty and the Sword is hardly ever made use of but in Capital Punishments This same Law together with other Laws of that good King Edward did William the Conqueror ratifie in the Fourth Year of his Reign and in a very full Council held at Verulam confirm'd it with a
the Land And I cannot upon this occasion but congratulate my self with the Honour of having had such Ancestors who founded this Government with no less prudence and in as much Liberty as the most worthy of the Ancient Romans or Grecians ever sounded any of theirs and they must needs if they have any knowledg of our Affairs rejoyce over their Posterity who when they were almost reduced to Slavery yet with so much Wisdom and Courage 〈◊〉 and asserted the State which they so wisely sounded upon so much Liberty from the unruly Government of a King CHAP. IX I Think by this time 't is sufficiently evident that Kings of England may be judged even by the Laws of England and that they have their proper Judges which was the thing to be proved What do you do farther for whereas you repeat many things that you have said before I do not intend to repeat the answers that I have given them 'T is an easie thing to demonstrate even from the nature of the things for which Parliaments are summon'd that the King is above the Parliament The Parliament you say is wont to be assembled upon weighty affairs such as wherein the safety of the Kingdom and of the people is concerned If therefore the King call Parliaments together not for his own concerns but those of the Nation nor to settle those neither but by their own consent at their own discretion what is he more than a Minister and as it were an agent for the people since without their Suffrages that are chosen by the people he cannot Eâ—… the least thing whatsoever either with relation to himself or any body else Which proves likewise that 't is the King's duty to call Parliaments whenever the people desire it since the peoples and not the King 's concerns are to be treated of that Assembly and to be ordered as they see cause For although the King's assent be required for fashion sake which in lesser matters that concerned the welfare of private persons only he might refuse and use that form the King will advise yet in those greater affairs that concern'd the publick safety and liberty of the people in general he had no Negative voice for it would have been against his Coronation Oath to deny his assent in such cases which was as binding to him as any Law could be and against the chief article of Magna Charta Cap. 29. We will not deny to any man nor will we delay to render to every man Right and Justice Shall it not be in the King's power to deny Justice and shall it be in his power to deny the Enacting of Just Laws Could he not deny Justice to any particular person and could he to all his people Could he not do it in inferior Courts and could he in the Supreme Court of all Or can any King be so arrogant as to pretend to know what 's just and profitable better than the whole body of the people Especially since he is created and chosen for this very end and purpose to do Justice to all as Braction says Lib. 3. Cap. 9. that is to do Justice according to such Laws as the people agree upon Hence is what we find in our Records 7 H 4. Rott Parl. num 59. The King has no Prerogative that derogates from Justice and Equity And formerly when Kings have refused to confirm Acts of Parliament to wit Magna Charta and some others our Ancestors have brought them to it by force of Arms. And yet our Lawyers never were of opinion that those Laws were less valid or less binding since the King was forced to assent to no more than what he ought in Justice to have assented to voluntarily and without constraint Whilest you go about to prove that Kings of other Nations have been as much under the power of their Senates or Counsels as our Kings were you do not argue us into Slavery but them into Liberty In which you do but that over again that you have from the very beginning of your Discourse and which some silly Leguleians now and then do to argue unawares against their own Clients But you say VVe confess that the King where-ever he be yet is supposed still to be present in his Parliament by vertue of his power insomuch that whatever is transacted there is supposed to be done by the King himself and then as if you had got some petty bribe or small morsel and tickled with the remembrance of your Purse of Gold We take say you what they give us and take a Halter then for I 'm sure you deserve it But we do not give it for granted which is the thing you thought would follow from thence That therefore that Court acts only by vertue of a Delegated Power from the King For when we say that the Regal Power be it what it will cannot be absent from the Parliament do we thereby acknowledg that Power to be Supreme does not the King's Authority seem rather to be transferred to the Parliament and as being the lesser of the two to be comprised in the greater Certainly if the Parliament may resâ—ind the King's Acts whether he will or no and revoke Priviledges granted by him to whomsoever they be granted If they may set bounds to his Prerogative as they see cause if they may regulate his yearly Revenue and the Expences of his Court his Retinue and generally all the concerns of his Houshold If they may remove his most intimate Friends and Counsellors and as it were pluck them out of his bosom and bring them to condign punishment Finally if any Subject may by Law appeal from the King to the Parliament all which things that they may lawfully be done and have been frequently practised both our Histories and Records and the most eminent of our Lawyers assure us I suppose no man in his right wits will deny the Authority of the Parliament to be superiour to that of the King For even in an Interregnum the Authority of the Parliament is in being and than which nothing is more common in our Histories they have often made a free Choice of a Successor without any regard to an Hereditary descent In short the Parliament is the Supreme Councel of the Nation constituted and appointed by a most free people and armed with ample power and authority for this end and purpose viz. to consult together upon the most weighty affairs of the Kingdom the King was created to put their Laws in execution Which thing after the Parliament themselves had declared in a publick Edict for such is the Justice of their Proceedings that of their own accord they have been willing to give an account of their actions to other Nations is it not prodigious that such a pitiful fellow as you are a man of no authority of no credit of no estate in the world a meer Burgundian 〈◊〉 should have the imprudence to accuse the Parliament of England asserting by a publick Instrument their
he thought was to be imputed wholly to the Presbyterians now that he considers the same thing from first to last he thinks the Independents were the sole Actors of it But even now he told us The Presbyterians took up Arms against the King that by them he was beaten taken captive and put in prison Now he says this whole Doctrine of Rebellion is the Independents Principle O! the faithfulness of this man's Narrative How consistent he is with himself What need is there of a Counter narrative to this of his that cuts its own throat But if any man should question whether you are an honest man or a Knave let him read these following lines of yours It is time to explain whence and at what time this Sect of Enemies to Kingship first began VVhy truly these rare Puritans began in Queen Elizabeths time to crawl out of Hell and disturb not only the Church but the State likewise for they are no less plagues to the latter than to the former Now your very speech bewrays you to be a right Balaam for where you designed to spit out the most bitter poyson you could there unwittingly and against your will you have pronounc'd a blessing For it 's notoriously known all over England that if any endeavoured to follow the example of those Churches whether in France or Germany which they accounted best Reformed and to exercise the publick Worship of God in a more pure manner which our Bishops had almost universally corrupted with their Ceremonies and Superstitions or if any seemed either in point of Religion or Morality to be better than others such â—…sons were by the Favourers of Episcopacy termed â—…ans These are they whose Principles you say are so opposite to Kingship Nor are they the only persons most of the Reformed Religion that have not sucked in the rest of their principles yet seem to have approved of those that strike at Kingly Government So that â—hile you inveigh bitterly against the Independents and endeavour to separate them from Christ's flock with the same breath you praise them and those Principles which almost every where you affirm to be peculiar to the Independents here you confess they have been approved of by most of the Reformed Religion Nay you are arrived to that degree of impudence impiety and apostacy that though formerly you maintained that Bishops ought to be extirpated out of the Church Root and Branch as so many pests and limbs of Antichrist here you say the King ought to protect them for the saving of his Coronation-Oath You cannot show your self a more infamous Villain than you have done already but by abjuring the Protestant Reformed Religion to which you are a scandal Whereas you tax us with giving a Toleration of all Sects and Heresies you ought not to find fault with us for that since the Church bears with such a prosâ—igate wretch as you your self such a vain fellow such a lyar such a Mercenary Slanderer such an Apostate one who has the impudence to affirm That the best and most pious of Christians and even most of those who profess the Reformed Religion are crept out of Hell because they differ in opinion from you I had best pass by the Calumnies that fill up the rest of this Chapter and those prodigious tenents that you ascribe to the Independents to render them odious for neither do they at-all concern the cause you have in hand and they are such for the most part as deserve to be laugh'd at and despised rather than receive a serious Answer CHAP. XI YOu seem to begin this Eleventh Chapter Salmasius though with no modesty yet with some sense of your weakness and trifling in this Discourse For whereas you proposed to your self to enquire in this place by what authority sentence was given against the King You add immediately which no body expected from you that 't is in vain to make any such enquiry to wit because the quality of the persons that did it leaves hardly any room for such a question And therefore as you have been found guilty of a great deal of Impupence and Sauciness in the undertaking of this Cause so since you seem here conscious of your own impertinence I shall give you the shorter answer To your question then by what authority the House of Commons either condemn'd the King themselves or delegated that power to others I answer they did it by vertue of the Supreme authority on earth How they come to have the Supreme Power you may learn by what I have said already when I refuted your Impertinencies upon that Subject If you believed your self that you could ever say enough upon any Subject you would not be so tedious in repeating the same things so many times over And the House of Commons might delegate their Judicial Power by the same reason by which you say the King may delegate his who received all he had from the people Hence in that Solemn League and Covenant that you object to us the Parliaments of England and Scotland solemnly protest and engage to each other to punish the Traytors in such manner as the Supreme Judicial Authority in both Nations or such as should have a Delegate power from them should think fit Here you hear the Parliaments of both Nations protest with one voice that they may Delegate their Judicial Power which they call the Supreme so that you move a vain and frivolous Controversie about Delegating this power But say you there were added to those Judges that were made choice of out of the House of Commons some Officers of the Army and that never was known that Soldiers had any right to try a Subject for his life I 'le silence you in a very few words You may remember that we are not now discoursing of a Subject but of an Enemy whom if a General of an Army after he has taken him Prisoner resolves to dispatch would he be thought to proceed otherwise than according to custom and Martial Law if he himself with some of his Officers should sit upon him and try and cendemn him An enemy to a State made a Prisouer of War cannot be lookt upon to be so much as a Member much less a King in that State This is declar'd by that Sacred Law of St. Edward which denies that a bad King is a King at all or ought to be called so Whereas you say it was not the whole but a part of the House of Comâ—â—ons that try'd and condemned the King I give you this answer The number of them who gave their Votes for putting the King to death was far greater than is necessary according to the custom of our Parliaments to transact the greatest Affairs of the Kingdom in the absence of the rest who since they were absent through their own fault for to revolt to the common enemy in their hearts is the worst sort of absence their absence ought not to hinder the rest who continued faithful to the
cause from preserving the State which when it was in a tottering condition and almost quite reduced to Slavery and utter ruin the whole body of the people had at first committed to their fidelity prudence and courage And they acted their parts like men they set themselves in opposition to the unruly wilfulness the rage the secret designs of an inveterate and exasperated King they prefer'd the common liberty and safety before their own they out-did all former Parliaments they out-did all their Ancestors in Conduct Magnanimity and steddiness to their cause Yet these very men did a great part of the people ungratefully desert in the midst of their undertaking though they had promised them all fidelity all the help and assistance they could afford them These were for Slavery and peace with sloth and luxury upon any terms Others demanded their Liberty nor would accept of a peace that was not sure and honourable What should the Parliament do in this case ought they to have defended this part of the people that was sound and continued faithful to them and their Country or to have sided with those that deserted both I know what you will say they ought to have done You are not Eurulochus but Elpenor a miserable Enchanted Beast a filthy Swine accustomed to a sordid Slavery even under a Woman so that you have not the least relish of true Magnanimity nor consequently of Liberty which is the effect of it You would have all other men slaves because you find in your self no generous ingenuous inclinations you say nothing you breath nothing but what 's mean and servile You raise another scruple to wit That he was the King of Scotland too whom we condemn'd as if he might therefore do what he would in England But that you may conclude this Chapter which of all others is the most weak and insipid at least with some witty querk There are two little words say you that are made up of the same number of Letters and differ only in the placing of them but whose significations are wide asunder to wit Vis and Jus might and right 'T is no great wonder that such a three letter'd man as you Fur a Thief should make such a Witticism upon three Letters 'T is the greater wonder which yet you assert throughout your Book that two things so directly opposite to one another as those two are should yet meet and become one and the same thing in Kings For what violence was ever acted by Kings which you do not affirm to be their Right These are all the passages that I could pick out of nine long Pages that I thought deserved an answer The rest consists either of repetitions of things that have been answered more than once or such as have no relation to the matter in hand So that my being more brief in this Chapter than in the rest is not to be imputed to want of diligence in me which how irksome soever you are to me I have not slackned but to your tedious impertinence so void of matter and sense CHAP. XII I Wish Salmasius that you had left out this part of your Discourse concerning the King's crimes which it had been more advisable for your self and your party to have done for I 'm afraid lest in giving you an answer to it I should appear too sharp and severe upon him now he is dead and hath received his punishment But since you chose rather to discourse confidently and at large upon that Subject I 'le make you sensible that you could not have done a more inconsiderate thing than to reserve the worst part of your cause to the last to wit that of ripping up and enquiring into the Kings Crimes which when I shall have proved them to have been true and most exorbitant they will render his memory unpleasant and odious to all good men and imprint now in the close of the Controversie a just hatred of you who undertake his defence on the Readers minds Say you His accusation may be divided into two parts one is conversant about his Morals the other taxeth him with such â—…lts as he might commit in his publick capacity I 'le be 〈◊〉 to pass by in silence that part of his life that he spent in Banqueâ—tings at Plays and in the conversation of Women for what can there be in Luxury and Excess worth relating And what would those things have been to us if he had been a private person But since he would be a King as he could not live a private life so neither could his Vices be like those of a private person For in the first place he did a great deal of mischief by his example In the second place all that time that he spent upon his lust and in his sports which was a great part of his time he stole from the State the Government of which he had undertaken Thirdly and lastly he squandered away vast Sums of Money which were not his own but the publick Revenue of the Nation in his Domestick Luxury and Extravagance So that in his private life at home he first began to be an ill King But let us rather pass over to those Crimes that he is charged with on the account of misgovernment Here you lament his being condemned as a Tyrant a Traytor and a Murderer That he had no wrong done him shall now be made appear But first let us define a Tyrant not according to vulgar conceits but the judgment of Aristotle and of all Learned Men. He is a Tyrant who regards his own welfare and profit only and not that of the people So Aristotle defines one in the Tenth Book of his Ethicks and elsewhere and so do very many others Whether Charles regarded his own or the peoples good these few things of many that I shall but touch upon will evince When his Rents and other publick Revenues of the Crown would not defray the Expences of the Court he laid most heavy Taxes upon the people and when they were squandred away he invented new ones not for the benefit honour or defence of the State but that he might hoard up or lavish out in one House the Riches and Wealth not of one but of three Nations When at this rate he broke loose and acted without any colour of Law to warrant his proceedings knowing that a Parliament was the only thing that could give him check he endeavoured either wholly to lay aside the very calling of Parliaments or calling them just as often and no oftner than to serve his own turn to make them entirely at his devotion Which Bridle when he had cast off himself he put another Bridle upon the people he put Garrisons of German Horse and Irish Foot in many Towns and Cities and that in time of Peace Do you think he does not begin to look like a Tyrant In which very thing as in many other Particulars which you have formerly given me occasion to instance in though you
and hope for them in vain under the Rule of a King They who are of opinion that these things cannot be compass'd but under a King and a Lord it cannot well be expressed how mean how base I do not say how unworthy thoughts they have of themselves for in effect what do they other than confess that they themselves are lazy weak senseless silly Persons and fram'd for Slavery both in Body and Mind And indeed all manner of Slavery is scandalous and disgraceful to a freeborn ingenious Person but for you after you have recovered your lost Liberty by God's Assistance and your own Arms after the performance of so many valiant Exploits and the making so remarkable an Example of a most Potent King to desire to return again into a Condition of Bondage and Slavery will not only be scandalous and disgraceful but an impious and wicked thing and equal to that of the Israelites who for desiring to return to the Egyptian Slavery were so severely punish'd for that sordid slavish Temper of mind and so many of them destroy'd by that God who had been their Deliverer But what say you now who would perswade us to become Slaves The King say you had a Power of pardoning such as were guilty of Treason and other Crimes which evinces sufficiently that the King himself was under no Law The King might indeed pardon Treason not against the Kingdom but against himself and so may any body else pardon wrongs done to themselves and he might perhaps pardon some other Offences tho not always but does that follow because in some Cases he had the Right of saving a Malefactor's life that therefore he must have a Right to destroy all good Men If the King be impleaded in an inferior Court he is not obliged to Answer but by his Attorney Does it therefore follow that when he is summon'd by all his Subjects to appear in Parliament he may chuse whether he will appear or no and refuse to Answer in Person You say That we endeavour to justify what we have done by the Hollander ' s Example and upon this occasion fearing the loss of that Stipend with which the Hollanders seed such a Murraine and Pest as you are if by reviling the English you should consequentially reflect upon them that maintain you you endeavour to demonstrate how unlike their Actions and ours are The Comparison that you make betwixt them I resolve to omit tho many things in it are most false and other things flattery all over which yet you thought your self obliged to put down to deserve your Pension For the English think they need not alledge the Examples of Foreigners for their Justification They have Municipal Laws of their own by which they have acted Laws with relation to the matter in hand the best in the World They have the Examples of their Ancestors Great and Gallant Men for their imitation who never gave way to the Exorbitant Power of Princes and who have put many of them to Death when their Government became insupportable They were born free they stand in need of no other Nation they can make what Laws they please for their own good Government One Law in particular they have a great Veneration for and a very Ancient one it is enacted by Nature it self That all Humane Laws all Civil Right and Government must have a respect to the safety and welfare of good Men and not be subject to the Lusts of Princes From hence to the end of your Book I find nothing but Rubbish and Trifles pick'd out of the former Chapters of which you have here raised so great a heap that I cannot imagine what other design you could have in it than to presage the ruin of your whole Fabrick At last after an infinite deal of tittle tatle you make an end calling God to witness that you undertook the defence of this Cause not only because you were desired so to do but because your own Conscience told you that you could not possibly undertake the Defence of a better Is it fit for you to intermedâ—le with our matters with which you have nothing to do because you were desired when we our selves did not desire you to reproach with contumelious and opprobrious language and in a Printed Book the Supreme Magistracy of the English Nation when according to the authority and power that they are entrusted with they do but their duty within their own Jurisdiction and all this without the least injury or provocation from them for they did not so much as know that there was such a man in the world as you And I pray by whom were you desired By your Wife I suppose who they say exercises a Kingly Right and Jurisdiction over you and whenever she has a mind to it as Fulvia is made to speak in that obscene Epigram that you collected some Centoes out of Pag. 320. cries Either write or let 's fight That made you write perhaps lest the â—ignal should be given Or were you asked by Charles the Younger and that proâ—ligate Gang of Vâ—gabond Courtiers and like a second Balaam call'd upon by another Balak to restore a desperate Cause by ill writing that was lost by ill fighting That may be but there 's this difference for he was a wise understanding man and rid upon an Ass that could speak to curse the People of God Thou art a very talkative Ass they self and rid by a Woman and being surrounded with the healed heads of the Bishops that heretofore thou hadst wounded thou seem'st to represent that Beast in the Revelation But they say that a little after you had written this Book you repented of what you had done 'T is well if it be so and to make your repentance publick I think the best course that you can take will be for this long Book that you have writ to take a Halter and make one long Letter of your self So Judas Iscariot repented to whom you are like and that young Charles knew which made him send you the Purse Judas his Badg for he had heard before and found afterward by experience that you were an Apostate and a Devil Judas betray'd Christ himself and you betray his Church you have taught heretofore that Bishops were Antichristian and you are now revolted to their party You now undertake the Defence of their Cause whom formerly you damn'd to the pit of Hell Christ delivered all men from Bondage and you endeavour to enslave all mankind Never question since you have been such a Villain to God himself his Church and all mankind in general but that the same fate attends you that befel your equal out of despair rather than repentance to be weary of your life and hang your self and burst asunder as he did and to send before-hand that faithless and treacherous Conscience of yours that railing Conscience at good and holy men to that place of torment that 's parpared for you And now I think through God's