Or what Skeriffs the next King may chose and what Returns of Parliament Men they may make For you know the Forfeiture on the Sheriffs making a false Return is no great matter and cannot a King pardon it by his Dispensing Power or Authority Royal What will nay what can your new Charter then signifie when it either is or may be according to your own Doctrin Invalidated Disanulled or Annihilated in an instant Ans If there should be raised by my Querest or any other like him such a perverse Spirit and behaviour in any Party of Men as to prevent the Nations selted enjoyment of these Priviledges we now have as Men and Christians by his Majesties Prudence Justice and Clemency who can tell indeed what the sad Consequences of it may be But if Duty Reason and common Interest prevail here is nothing offer'd that should cause any Man to slack his utmost diligence and endeavours to arrive at the Settlement proposed by a New Charter For what do these Queries tend to or what of any weight do they contain For First Does William Penn or any party of Dissenters propose any such Methods to be persued as may advance Prerogative to that degree as to Invalidate or Annihilate all our Laws Secondly Is not the National Religion as it is Stiled in the first place to be maintained and as well secured as any old or new Law can make it with such a Liberty for consiencious Dissenters from it in the worship of God Exploding of all Lisenciousness as may free them front future inconveniency upon account of Religion Thirdly Is any thing suggessed that by a new Charter greater power should be given to the King for choosing of Sheriffs then now he has or that the penalties upon a Sheriffs making false Returns shall be less then now then are or any thing else to render our Case worse then it is You take it for granted I know that which I do not know nor your self neither as I suppose that the Sheriffs Forfeiture who shall make a false Return is no great matter or that which the King can pardon or dispence with The Case of Sr Samuel Barnardiston wherein he had a Verdict and Eight Hundred Pounds damage given against a Sheriff for a false Return may inform you otherwise and certainly a new Charter will not make it less Penal then now it is but if it should ever happen notwithstanding a new Charter as it has heretofore happen'd notwithstanding our old Charter that Knights and Burgesses should not be duly chosen the same Fate may attend such a Parliament as did that of 38 H. 6. I now come to your second Consideration wherein you pray Mr Penn to consider What his New Charter can signifie so long as there is a High Commission Court or a high Commission for Ecclesiastical Affairs set up Cannot those Commissioners take any of your and our Preachers Teachers or Ministers to Task when they please Cannot they when they have a mind to it suspend Mr Pen or George Whitehead Mr Alsop Mr Lobb Mr Mead or Mr Bowyer as well as the Bishop of London c. Cannot the Court when they will or shall think fit or be commanded suspend silence or forbid any or all the Dissenting Ministers to Preach any longer in their Meetings if they will not Read any Declaration or Order whatever that the King shall set forth and require them to Read Remember the Magdalen Colledge Men Remember also that Sawse for a Goose is or may be Sawse for a Gander Ans The case of Magdalen Colledge is published at large you may Read it if you please and Answer it if you can especially the paralel case in Edwards the Sixth time But pray what is that to a New Charter If wrong Judgment was given by the Court as you perhaps suppose in that case do you make no disserence between Dispensing with a Law and wrong Judgment given against a Law if any such should be in Westminster Hall or the Ecclesiastical Court If the Dissenters you name or you who pretend to be a Baptist be of the Clergy of England in the Eye of the Law and hold Ecclesiastical Affairs and Benefits they or you may for Mis-behaviour be suspended from them by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners But why do you fancy that a New Charter by which it is expected that Penalties for matters of meer Religion will be repealed should be made to signifie nothing by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners which now are I can easily fore-see that a New Charter may make that Commission in the cases you mention to signifie nothing but I cannot imagine how that Commission should make a New Charter insignificant As to the silencing of Dissenting Ministers its evident as the Law now is their reading or not reading the Kings Declaration in their Meetings will not prevent it if the King withdraw his Favour nor is there any cause to give the Ecclesiastical Commissioners any trouble about them for as the Laws now are there are other Ecclesiastical Courts which with the aid of the Justices at their Sessions are sufficiently impowred to Censure Fine Imprison Banish or Hang them for their Non-conformity to the Religion Established by Law. You exhort us to see before we Leap whether the Words in the Orders set forth in the Gazett for contempt of his Majesties Authority will run no further then just Mr Penn will have it And ask Can he stop the Current of it when he pleases and say If he could we are not sure he would for formerly he had no great kindness we know for us Baptists and other Dissenters and if he could and would we are not sure of his Life how long therefore it will be the greatest piece of Weakness and Folly in the World for us to Danee after his and the Jesuits Pipe alone contrary both to all common Sence and Reason and our own general Interest Ans How do you make out your Inference That to do as you say is the greatest piece of Weakness and Folly I take it to be altogether as great folly to Dance after your Pipe in Company contrary to common Sence Reason and Interest as after Mr Penn and the Jesuites alone surely in this you take the Dissenters to be very forgetful of what their Senses so lately testified when under the feeling Prosecution of Penal Laws and to be unreasonably ignorant of their Interest in desiring those Penal Laws may be Repealed in Parliament and a due Liberty of Conscience Established in their room But for what cause do you reflect upon Mr Penn I take it as a certain Evidence that all Pamphlets on this Subject that are interlaced with personal Reflections asserted on Surmises without proof are designed to promote Factious Dissentions rather then to Unite in one common Interest and heal our uncharitable Divisions I have known Mr Penn for many Years and have been credibly informed by others that from his Age of Seventeen Years he has been
An Answer BY AN ANABAPTIST TO THE Three Considerations Proposed to Mr William Penn By a pretended BAPTIST CONCERNING A MAGNA CHARTA FOR Liberty of Conscience Allowed to be Published this 10th Day of September 1688. London Printed in the Year 1688. An Answer BY AN ANABAPTIST TO THE Three Considerations c. YOU desire All your Dissenting Brethren to Consider and then Answer I have Consider'd but I cannot tell whether you suppose all Dissenters are your Brethren or that all are your Brethren who dissent from you If the first It seems probable to me that you have been either Educated in a strange Soyl or have forgotten your Brothers Dialect so that I cannot discern that you are any otherwise a Baptist then only in Masquerade and therefore am shy of owning the Relation But if all that dissent from you must therefore be reckon'd your Brethren then I am in that Number and because I think Mr Penn may not have so much leisure as my self at present to attend upon your Trifles I intend to be in the first Rank of your Respondents I consider also that though you have proposed but Three Considerations yet you have bolted out a Mulitude of Questions which administer an occasion for as many more to be retorted To your first Question Then What Validity or Security can any pretended or designed future New Law or Charter have when we see so many of the present Laws we already have may be and are by the Dispensing Power Dispensed with So many of the present Laws The Grievance then with you may lie rather in the Number than in the Dispensing Power His Majesty might with your leave perhaps have dispensed with some Persons and some Penalties too but not with so many altogether One would think by that you would not have Quarrel'd at the Dispensing Fower tho the Act for levying Twelve Pence a Week had never been Prosecuted so as the Twenty Pound a Month had been Levied nor if the Conventicle Act had been Dispensed with so as the Thirty fifth of Queen Elizabeth had been rigorously Executed I cannot tell how many but all the Laws that are Dispensed with are Penal Laws of a like nature for matters Ecclesiastical Uniformity Sacraments Oaths and Tests are the Subject of them all If this be your Grief you must be either a Conforming Baptist or such a strange sort of a Baptist as in my Forty Years Conversation among them I have never met with But to come more close to your Question What Validity can a New Law have seeing so many of these we have already are Dispensed with I Answer with a like Interrogation I grant that the King may do what his Royal Pleasure is with his own Does it thereupon follow that He may do so likewise with what is mine If I acckowledge and thankfully accept His Dispensing with a Penalty to which I am Obnoxious because I take a Liberty in matters of meer Religion which I am not allowed by Statute Laws Is it of necessary consequence that I therein acknowledge He may also impose a Fine upon me for lawfully using a Liberty when granted to me by Law It s hoped the designed New Charter for Repeal of such Penal Laws as are inconsistant with the Doctrines of Christianity will according to His Majesties Declaration both maintain the National Religion as it is now Established by Law and provide for such a Christian Liberty as may set at Ease and Secure the Consciences Persons and Properties of all that will Live Soberly Righteously and Godly in this present Age whether they be Conformists or Non-conformists to the National Religion And a Grant remains valid tho a Penalty may be dispensed with But what if the New Law should have no more Validity or Security then these Old Ones that are Dispensed with The Dissenters will yet be in so much a better Case by a New Law as that they will then be Secur'd by Law whereas till that be done they are always subject to be Ruin'd under colour of Law. But why are you so Querulous at the Dispensing Power in this particular case wherein it is Exercised The King declares his Opinion That Conscience ought not to be constrained nor People forced in matters of meer Religion This Principle is the ground of his Dispensation Have you not lately observed That divers Gentlemen who being in Commission would not Execute these Penal Laws and were therefore for a season laid aside are now returned again into their former Stations with Reputation and the Love of their Neighbours Have you not Read the Apology for the Church of England with relation to the Spirit of Persecution for which she is accused How their former Errors are extenuated by Instances pag. 4. That tho the Party in Parliament of the Church of England did not perform what had been promised by some Leading Men to the Dissenters in procuring them a Bill of Ease yet there was little or nothing done against them for about Nine Years but they had their Meetings almost as publickly as regularly as the Church of England had their Churches Do you not remember a Vote of the House of Commons in 1680. whereby it was Resolved That the Proseeution of Protestant Dissenters upon the Penal Laws was at that time Grievous to the Subject Shall the Justices that did not Execute these Laws gain Esteem by it Shall the Church of England excuse her self from the charge of Severity by her not Executing these Laws for Nine Years together Shall the Commons in Parliament Vote the Execution of them a Grievance And may not the King extend his Compassion towards his Dissenting Subjects and say They shall not be Executed To make such a signal Act of Grace the ground of a groundless Jealousie and cause of Contention to say no worse of it is highly Disingenuous and discovers a very froward and perverse Disposition But let us consider your next knot of Questions Have we or can we have any higher Power here in England then King Lords and Commons in Parliament Assembled The Laws that are now Dispensed with and rendred useless were they not made by that Power Can your New Charter be made by any higher or other Power Do you think there is any Temponal or Spiritual Power here in England above the Dispensing Power And can you make it appear to us To these Questions you desire Mr Penn would let his Brethren and you know his Mind honestly In his stead I answer We have no Law Makers but King Lords and Commons in Parliament Assembled but yet we are in England as well as in other parts of the World under a Law to God and thereby each Man is obliged to preserve within his own Breast the Answer of a good Conscience from which no Law of King Lords and Commons can absolve him and hence it is that we have many Fundamental Maximes of Law grounded upon the Law of God and common Reason of Mankind as well
respecting the Soveraigns Prerogative as the Right of the Subject not written in Acts of Parliament but in their Nature so invariable That as our Lawyers tell us Acts of Parliament made against them are void in themselves And if this Opinion be true these Fundamental Maximes of Law whether in Spirituals or Temporals tho they may be for a season by a particular Act of Parliament interrupted they are not thereby vacated but still retained and will at one time or other again discover their Vigor Acts not contradictory to these Fundamental Laws may be useful for a season but not having that innate Stability as Fundamental Maximes have may afterwards become useless improper and grievous to be put in Execution hence those common distinctions between Malum in se malum prohibitum And subseqent thereto in many cases a power or no power of Dispensing That which is unlawful in it self to be done as Murther Theft Trespass and the like cannot be made lawful by any Law or Dispensation whatsoever That which is lawful in it self but becomes unlawful because prohibited by a particular Statute may be Dispensed with so as no particular Person be Damnified by that Dispensation and not otherwise Among the many Vicissitudes of Succession to the Crown between the two Houses of York and Laneaster Do you think there were no Laws in being made in the Raign of a King of one of these Branches in Fact dispens'd with by his Successor of the other Branch till they came to be Repealed in Parliament Were the Oathes of Fidelity and Obedience made to the Line Interrupted required to be taken by all Judges Justices Sheriffs and other Officers Commissionated by the other Line which succeeded until they were Repealed in Parliament In the various changes of the National Religion between the Reigns of King Henry the the Eighth and Queen Elizabeth were all Penalties imposed by Laws respecting Religion exacted without any Relax or Suspension till those Laws were Abrogated in Parliament In the first Year of King Henry the Fourth a whole Parliament held in the Twenty first of Richard the Second was Repealed In one of which Laws then made divers Pains of Treason were ordained whereby as the Act of Repeal says No Man did know how he ought to behave himself to Do Speak or Say for doubt of such Pain and if that Law had been Religiously observed till the moment of its Repeal It could never have been repealed In the Second Year of Richard the Third a Statute made in the First of the said King was Dispensed with by Proclamation Vaughans Rep. pag. 353. Now I would gladly hear what cause my pretended Brother Baptist has to Quarrel at his present Majesties gracious Dispensing with Laws inflicting Temporal Penalties for Ecclesiastical Matters and rendring them useless for the present in that respect only till they can be Repealed in Parliament And wherein the exercise of this Dispensing Power has exceeded what has been in Fact done by his Royal Predecessors and admitted may be lawfully done by our greatest Lawyers But to proceed Shall your New Charter have a Penalty inserted to be inflicted on the Infringers or Breakers of it or no If not What will your New Charter signifie Not three skips of a Lowse And if it hath a Penalty Cannot any King by his Prerogative and Authority Royal Dispence with the Penalty And what will it signifie then This pretended Baptist's Resolution of the first of these Questions is as Weak as it is Idle and both that and the others may receive a satisfactory Answer Such a New Charta as is desired if no Penalty be annex'd may be very significant in many respects 1 It may be materially good and obliging to Obedience by its innate Vertue on pain of Condemnation by the Divine Law and in that respect of greater signification and much more desirable then such Laws as are materially Bad and cannot be obeyed without Breach of the Law of God. 2 This New Charter may without annexing any Penalties Repeal all those Penalties by which Persons are compelled to perform Acts of Divine Worship contrary to their Understanding Faith and a Good Conscience and put it out of the Power of any Dispensation to revive those Laws or to impose Penalties of the like kind 3 Such a New Law may without any Penalties by its simple Declarations put an issue to that which is now unreasonably made the ground of all our Contests and confirm to us all those Laws by which our Liberties and Properties are preserved But presuming it may also have Penalties inserted to be inflicted on the Infringers or Breakers of it These may be so qualified as not to be Dispensed with if under the colour thereof evil minded Men do not practice upon the Soveraign Power For in such a case if the Soveraign Power cannot Dispence with the Penalty of a Statute Law it may be divested of such means as are necessary for its own Preservation but in any ordinary case if any Person or Body Corporate receive particular Damage by the breach of such a New Law He or They may if the Legislators please be Intitled to a particular Action by the same Law and recover Damages against the Breakers of it Vaughans Rep. pag. 334 342. at the Kings Suit by Indictment or Presentment or by a Special Action with which the King cannot Dispence The Instance you give to put us out of Doubt in Mr Langhornes Words touching the Kings Right in Dispensing with Penal Laws I shall not Repeat but only observe That the Opinion you cite however you may do it in scorn carries such an Evidence in it for a Dispensing Power not in ordinary Cases as that Author has well observed but upon extraordinary Occasions when the King in his Wisdom shall find it necessary as calls for more Cunning then I yet perceive in you to raise any material Objection against it Qu. Now where is the assurance then of Mr Penn's New Charter Ans Our Assurance will lie not only in the Authority of the Legislators equal to any other Law but also in the Authority of the Matter which will command an Assent in every Mans Conscience assoon as he reads it Not to do that to another which he would not have done to himself Our Assurance will be in our Love and Affection One towards Another as Neighbours concern'd to promote the common Interest of the Realm In the Watchfulness of all Parties against any one particular Faction if any such should rise up and attempt to inthrall the Consciences of all the rest in our thankful and dutiful Behaviour towards our Soveraign for breaking off those intolerable Yoaks we could not bear and setting us upon such a lasting Foundation both for our Civil and Religious Liberties as with a discreet Care and Management of them may remain firm to Perpetuity Qu. But who can tell what King we may have after our present Soveraign whether so mercifull or so just