that he should think to impose such a belief upon the impartial part of the World after the truth of what I charge him with had been so long before attested in print under the hands of two such men as the Bishops of Ely and Chester who could not chuse but know what was then said on both sides is a confidence that never any yet even of Mr. Baxter's own party hath assumed and I believe never will Good reason therefore had I to reprint that Letter of mine together with the aforesaid Attestation annexed to it that what is in question betwixt Mr. Baxter and me might truly and clearly be stated namely whether he did or did not assert what I charge him with which being onely matter of fact and consequently no way to be decided but by Witnesses and such Witnesses as cannot justly nor ever were actually either by Mr. Baxter himself or any of his party in so many years since excepted against and they having testified so clearly and effectually as they do that charge of mine against Mr. Baxter I know not what needed to have been done more for my justification and his conviction but the reprinting of the testimony of two such Witnesses as they are Against whose Testimony as to the invalidating of it nothing he asserts now though never so true nor none of the Instances he gives of such an Assertion though never so pertinent do or can signifie any thing for that which I charge him with and what the aforesaid Witnesses testifie against him is onely concerning what he asserted then and not what he hath asserted at any time since or doth assert now which as is already proved is very far from being the same which he asserted then And this Mr. Baxter himself must needs confess unless he will say as I think he will not that there is no difference betwixt denying as he did then the command of a lawfull thing to be lawfull though it be not commanded under an unjust penalty and the denying as he doth now the lawfulness of such a command if it be commanded under an unjust penalty or as if it were all one to assert as he did then the command of a thing lawfull in it self to be unlawfull if by accident it might be the cause or occasion of evil or sin though it were such an evil or sin as the Commander was not obliged to prevent and to assert as he doth now such a command to be unlawfull if the evil or sin which it might be the cause of were foreseen and ought to have been prevented by the Commander But these Assertions being so contrary as they are to one another Mr. Baxter's asserting that which is true now will not excuse him from having asserted that which was false then which was all that I charged him with If he hath changed his mind since and be ashamed to own and maintain now what he then held and asserted and therefore sought to palliate and disguise it as well as he could yet he ought not to have excused himself by accusing me and which is much worse by endeavouring to make it to be believed that we of the Episcopal Party asserted the Command of a lawfull thing to be lawfull if it were commanded by lawfull Authority though under never so unjust a penalty and though the Commander did foresee that it would by accident be the cause of never so great a mischief and such as he knew he was bound to prevent as the selling of Poyson by an Apothecary who foresees it will be made use of to poyson some body and thereby implying that they were onely such things as this or of the like nature to this which we asserted and he denied to be lawfull which is evidently and equally false in relation to us and to himself also for we never asserted the lawfulness of the one nor denied the unlawfulness of the other as he would have it to be believed we did so that to what I charged him with before I must now add not onely his want of ingenuity in disguising and misrepresenting what He asserted or denied but his being guilty of Calumny also in disguising and misrepresenting what we asserted or denied at the aforesaid Conference in the Savoy And therefore this being the ground of all that he hath said in that Treatise of which he saith it was purposely written against me to confute my gross mistaking charge against him needs no refutation because it proceeds all the way ex falso supposito upon a false supposition as if what he asserts there were the same that he asserted at the Conference or as if because what he asserted afterwards was true therefore what he had said before was not false or lastly as if because he doth not continue to say so therefore he never did say so by which kind of Logick he might as well conclude he never thought it lawfull to fight against the King because he now doth not or at least pretends he doth not or that he never writ all his Political Aphorisms because he tells us since that he hath recanted some of them or that he never thought it lawfull to subscribe and conform when he was ordained by a Bishop because he doth not think so now such Inferences as these are not nor cannot be true when they are affirmed of any fallible and mutable subject as all men are both in their Words and Actions and Mr. Baxter will some men say hath been so as much as any man in both of them So that having sufficiently proved that which I charged Mr. Baxter with which was what he asserted then I have sufficiently discharged my self from being so grosly mistaken as he pretended or indeed from being mistaken at all And therefore need say nothing or at least no more than I have said already in answer to the aforesaid Book or Treatise of his which onely tells us what his Judgment of things sinfull per accidens is now but not what it was then which was the thing and onely thing I charged him withall which he is so far from disproving that he doth not as much as deny it or take any notice at all of it in this whole Treatise which he pretends purposely to have written for the confutation of it which it is so far from confuting that there be several of his own Propositions in that Treatise that do implicitly and consequentially justifie my Charge against him by proving that Proposition of ours to be true which he then denied as false For Example Prop. 31. He saith Rulers may command many things which the Subject may by accident make sinfull for himself to doe And in the next Proposition he saith There be some accidents rendring the Act commanded unlawfull which the Commander may and ought to make provision against or prevent But there are some which he neither can nor is bound therefore to forbear or to change his
as when he saith unto them Come they must come so when he saith unto them Go they must go according to the legal and established Constitution of our Government Which being so I wonder how the two Houses can be said to be co-ordinate with the King or how the Soveraignty can be said to be divided betwixt the King and the two Houses when neither of them are Houses till he makes them to be so nor continue to be Houses any longer than he will have them to do so Indeed if the two Houses of Parliament were Bodies that were always in being as the Senate of Rome was and as the Senates of Venice and Genoa now are or such as might assemble and meet together when and as often as they pleased and continue together as long as they pleased as the States of Holland may and do now and as Grotius tells us they might and did even then when they had Kings such he means as were called Kings but were no more Kings indeed than those of Sparta were as Grotius himself tells us in the same place if I say our two Houses of Parliament were such a Senate as were always in being or might be so when they pleased and continue so as long as they pleased there might perhaps be some pretence for their having some part in the Soveraignty But when they have no being at all till the King gives it them by calling them together and are reducible to what they were before that is to no being again whensoever he pleaseth to dismiss them I cannot imagine in what sence the two Houses of Parliament can be said either to be Co-ordinate with the King or to have any share in the Soveraignty or Kingly power I am sure that according to the established constitution of our Government as they have not yet so it is and always will be in the Kings power to prevent their Usurpation of any such power as long I mean as he keeps the power of calling and dismissing that is of making and unmaking them in his own hands and confequently of acting any thing in their Parliamentary capacity to the prejudice of the Crown or of the People I say to the prejudice of the Crown or of the People because what is really prejudicial to the Crown is really prejudicial to the People also howsoever or by whomsoever the People may be and are often made to believe otherwise and are not to be convinced of their error but by their feeling only CHAP. III. The Legislative power solely in the King How far the Parliament concerned in making Laws Dr. Sanderson 's judgment of it Mr. B. ascribes the whole Soveraignty to the Vsurpers upon the Kings loss of his Part against a Thests of his own BUT although it be the King's Summons of them or calling of them together that makes them to be the two Houses and consequently that inables them to act as the two Houses or in their Parliamentary capacity and although they cease to be two Houses or to have any power to act in a Parliamentary capacity when the King pleaseth to dismiss them yet because Mr. Baxter may say that as long as they are two Houses or as long as the King permits them to sit together in their Parliamentary capacity they have a Legislative power or right of making Laws together with the King for the whole Kingdom and consequently are partakers of the Soveraignty with the King also the making of Laws for the whole Nation being undoubtedly one of the Essentials of the Soveraignty or supreme power We are therefore in the 3d. place to inquire what the two Houses do or legally can do as to the making of our Laws and whether that be enough to entitle them to be properly called Legislators or if I may so speak Collegislators with the King All that ever I heard that either of the two Houses severally or both of them joyntly could legally do in order to Law-making is but the framing and proposing or offering unto the King such Bills or materials as they think fit to be made Laws by the King if he think them fit to be made Laws also Here is the two Houses Non-ultra hitherto they may go but no further And sure it is not the proposing of any thing to be made a Law that is the making of a Law or that can prove the Proposers to be the Law-makers especially if he to whom they propose it may choose whether he will make it a Law or no as there was never any doubt made but he might before the rebellious Parliament in the late Kings time broached the contrary together with many other Anti-monarchical Paradoxes to justifie their own Anti-monarchical and rebellious Practices against the known Laws Customs and Constitutions of this Kingdom of which this was one of the most essential that as the Houses had a liberty to pass and propose Bills to the King so the King might as he saw cause or thought fit make or not make them to be or not to be Laws by giving or not giving his Royal assent unto them For it is the Kings Fiat or the stamp of Royal Authority upon them that makes those Bills to become Laws obliging all the Kings Subjects to the obedience of them or for non-obedience to the Penalties appointed by them So that the Bills are but the materia ex quâ the matter out of which Laws may be made but the forma per quam the formalis ratio or intrinsecal and specifical form by which what were before Bills become Laws is the obliging power which the King by his Fiat breaths into them as God doth the Soul into the Body to make it a living and a rational Creature And therefore Mr. Baxter who being so Metaphysical a man as he is as he must needs know that it is forma or causa formalis the form or formal cause per quam res est quod est which makes every thing to be what it is must needs know too and if he have any ingenuity confess likewise that from whence and whence only the Laws have their obliging power which is formalis ratio Legis that which makes Law to be Law from thence and thence only those Laws must have their being also and consequently if it be the King's Fiat only that gives those Bills that are by the two Houses presented to him an obliging power over the whole Nation thereby making them of Bills to become Laws the King and none but the King must needs be the sole efficient or maker of those Laws For as Forma est causa per quam res est quod est so Efficiens est causa à quâ res est quod est As the Form is the cause by which the thing is what it is so the Efficient is the cause from which the thing is what it is by introducing that form which makes it to be what it is
it to be unlawfull and consequently the endeavouring to make the People believe it to be lawfull by writing or preaching in defence of it is dangerous and seditious and such a thing as ought not to be endured in a well-governed State of any kind whatsoever Now that this doctrine That it is lawfull for Subjects in any case to resist or rise up in arms against their Sovereign is inconsistent with the Well-being of all Bodies Politick or Commonwealths of what kind or denomination soever and consequently inconsistent with the welfare or well-being of all Mankind here in this World methinks should need no other Argument to make it to be believed but this one onely that it undeniably makes all Humane Societies to be always and unavoidably liable to the worst of evils that can befall any State or humane Society and that is a Civil War which besides the horrible mischiefs it brings with it it commonly ends in a more insupportable Tyranny and bondage of the whole body of the People than what was pretended to have been the cause of it For proof whereof I might appeal not onely to the Testimony of all Histories of all Ages and of all Nations as well as of our own but to the personal Experience of many thousands yet living who have all of them seen and many of them felt what I have said of a Civil War to be true namely that it is the greatest of Evils a State is subject unto and consequently ought not to be engaged in for the preventing avoiding or remedying of any that are less Nor are they will Mr. Baxter say the Peccadillo's of the Prince or the petite Grievances of Subjects by their Sovereigns that can excuse their resisting or rising up in Arms against them but they must be such as are of Publick Concernment and such as against which by the Laws of Nature for Self-preservation men are not onely permitted but obliged to defend themselves I know that Grotius who is often but not always pertinently cited by Mr. Baxter in his answer to this question An Lex de non resistendo nos obligat in gravissimo certissimo discrimine that is Whether the Law of non-resistance doth oblige us in a most grievous and most certain hazard seems to grant that in such a case it may be lawfull for Subjects to resist their Sovereigns But then it is observable first that it is a contradiction to his own general Rule viz. Summum imperium tenentibus resisti jure non posse That those who have the Supreme Power cannot lawfully or by right be resisted Secondly it is a Contradiction to the judgment and practice of the Primitive Christians and consequently to the doctrine of the Apostles and of Christ himself For as Grotius himself tells us in one place Consuetudo veterum Christianorum est optima legis Christianoe interpres that is The custom of the old Christians is the best Interpreter of the Christian Law in the general so in this very particular he tells us in another place namely in that before by me cited and which I desired to be observed Nempe Christianis veteribus qui recentes ab Apostolorum Apostolicorum virorum disciplinâ eorum proescripta intelligebant meliùs perfectiùs implebant summam fieri injuriam puto ab iis qui quo minùs ipsi se defenderent in certissimo mortis periculo vires putant illis non animum defuisse In which saying of his taking it for granted that the Primitive Christians which did best understand the Apostolical Precepts and did most perfectly conform their practice thereunto would not nor did not defend themselves no not in certissimo mortis periculo when they were sure to be killed if they did not and that not because they wanted either strength or courage but because they thought as they were taught that it was not lawfull for them to doe so And there cannot saith Grotius in that place a greater injury be done to those Primitive Christians than to think otherwise of them that is than to think that it was not for Conscience sake but for want of strength that they forbore to defend themselves in certissimo mortis periculo In the most certain peril of death which is I think all one with in gravissimo certissimo discrimine In the most grievous and most certain hazard so that if it be lawfull for Christians to doe that now ingravissimo certissimo discrimine In the most grievous and certain hazard which the Primitive Christians who best understood saith Grotius the Apostolical doctrine thought it not lawfull for them to doe then in certissimo mortis periculo In the most certain peril of death that is in the very same case it must be by virtue of some other Gospel or of some special dispensation that we have and they had not or that those Apostolical Precepts de non resistendo Supremam potestatem habentibus Of not resisting those who have the Supreme Power were to be no longer in force than untill the Christian Subjects should have power enough to resist their Sovereigns or at least to defend themselves against them Which opinion how derogatory it is to the simplicity sincerity and veracity of the Gospel and consequently how unworthy to be owned by any that owns himself to be a Christian I think I have sufficiently proved already nor can I suspect a man of so great Learning and Ingenuity as Grotius was ever to have been of this opinion though I cannot see how he can be defended from leaning towards it when he affirms or seems at least to affirm that may be done now by Christian Subjects which was never done nor never thought lawfull to be done in the very same case by the Primitive Christians though they had strength enough to doe it and though saith he they best understood the Apostolical Precepts and did most punctually comply with the meaning of them And therefore lastly it is observable and I am willing to observe it for that Great man's sake that such a resistance of Sovereigns by their Subjects even in such a case in gravissimo certissimo discrimine In the most grievous and most certain hazard is not to be allowed saith Grotius Nisi cum hoc fortè additamento si fieri possit absque maxima Reipublicoe perturbatione aut exitio plurimorum innocentium Unless it can be done without a very great perturbation or disturbance of the Commonwealth and without the destruction of very many innocent Persons which in effect is all one as if he had said it is never to be done at all For how there can be a forcible resistance of Sovereigns by their Subjects or how Subjects can rise up in Arms and make use of them either offensively or defensively against their Sovereigns Absque maxima Reipublicoe perturbatione exitio plurimorum innocentium Without a very great perturbation of the Commonwealth or
Principle common to them all and what can that be but the Law of Nature and what is the Law of Nature but the Law of God himself written in mens hearts And therefore it was according to this Law before there was any positive Law of God or Man in the case that Jacob in blessing of his Children before his death did acknowledge Reuben's right of Primogeniture by saying that his was the excellency of dignity and the excellency of power because he was his first-born if he had not forfeited it by defiling his Father's Bed and consequently by committing Incest as well as Adultery crimes punishable by death even in those days as appears by Judah's condemning his Daughter-in-Law Thamar to be burnt supposing her to have been an Adulteress And it was for a crime punishable by death also that Simeon and Levi the two next eldest Sons of Jacob lost the priviledge of their Birth-right also namely for being guilty of the horrible murder of the Inhabitants of the whole City of Shechem And thus the dignity of Excellency and the dignity of Power came to be the Inheritance of Judah Jacob's fourth Son because the three Elder Brothers had forfeited their Right thereunto by being guilty of such Crimes as were punishable by death which guilt of theirs being given by their Father Jacob as a reason why or cause for which they were disinherited from thence we may infer first that naturally or according to the Law of Nature the Eldest and consequently the next in bloud hath a right to inherit before those that are younger or those that are farther off And 2dly That they are not to be excluded from that right of theirs but for some very great crime or unless God who disposeth of all things as he pleaseth do prefer the younger before the elder as he did Jacob before Esau Ephraim before Manasses and David the youngest before all his elder Brethren though Isaac and Joseph and Samuel himself seem to wonder why he did so it being contrary to the dictates of Nature and the general practice of all Mankind and contrary to the general Positive Law of God himself also concerning the descent of Inheritances from Father to Son and if he have no Son to his Daughters and if he have no Daughters to his nearest Kinsman of his Family as is set down at large Numb 27. from Verse the 8th to the 12th compared with Deuteronomy the 21. v. 16. where it is said that if a Man have a younger Son by a Wife that he loves better than he loved her by whom he had his eldest Son he shall not make the Son of his beloved Wife the first-born that is his Heir before the Son of the Wife whom he hated who is indeed the first-born or indeed his eldest and therefore indeed and in right his Heir which right it seems by the Text his Father could not deprive him of or take from him unless he were so rebellious and incorrigible as that he was to be stoned by the People and put to death for it as may be gathered from the Verses immediately following in the aforesaid Chapter So that it seems it was not by the Positive Law of God in the power of the Father to deprive his eldest Son of his Birth right for any thing less than would deprive him of his Life neither was a younger Son to be preferr'd before the eldest as to the Prerogatives of Birth-right because he was a better Man or a better Son because the Prerogative of Birth-right was not founded in Grace but in Nature and therefore though Cain was graceless and impious and Abel a righteous and religious Person yet God tells Cain that he was to rule over Abel which he could have no right or title to but because he was his elder Brother and so was profane Esau to rule over Jacob upon that Account only if he had not sold him his Birth-right and with it his Right and Title to Lordship over him And as this was the way of succeeding in the Government of Families so was it in the Government of Kingdoms also generally amongst the Gentiles as they were led by the light and instinct of Nature only and particularly amongst the Jews by the Positive Law of God as appears by the Catalogue and Genealogy of the Kings of Juda where the eldest of the Sons did always succeed his Father in the Kingdom without interruption unless God himself who is King of Kings was pleased to interpose as he did in the succession of David to Saul and of Solomon to David which were both of them Acts of God's Prerogative and not according to the ordinary course of Law amongst the Jews as appears by Solomon's answer to his Mother Batshebah when she spake to him to let his Brother Adonijah have Abishag the Shunamite to Wife Ask for him said he the Kingdom also for he is mine elder Brother which is a plain confession of Solomon himself that according to the ordinary course of Law then in force Adonijah should have succeeded David in the Kingdom had not David who was a Prophet as well as a King known God's mind to the contrary And indeed God had made known his mind unto David concerning Solomon by Nathan the Prophet when assoon as he was born he called his name Jedidiah that is beloved of the Lord thereby making David to understand that he was design'd to succeed him in the Throne Whereunto may be added that perhaps Adonijah was confederate with Absolom whose Brother he was by the same Mother in his rebellion against David and consequently had forfeited what was due to him by his Birth-right being guilty of what he deserved to be put to death for though by reason of his Fathers fondness of him he was not put to death for it But whether this or God's Intimation of his pleasure to David by Nathan the Prophet were the reason that Solomon the younger Brother was preferred before Adonijah the eldest to succeed David in the Kingdom it is evident by Solomon's aforesaid answer to his Mother and by the constant course of succession in that Kingdom that there as well as in all other Nations the eldest Son or nearest in bloud was legally to succeed in Thrones as well as in Families and do so still and are of right to do so in all Hereditary Kingdoms from which right grounded upon the Law of Nature attested by the general practice of all Mankind in all places and in all ages and ratified by God's positive Law to his own People I see not how any man can be excluded without some kind of Violation of the Law of Nature or without some kind of unbecoming Reflection upon the Positive Law of God it self as if God had not made as good and as wise a Law to obviate all inconveniences for his own People as any People could make for themselves CHAP. VI. Such Exclusion