Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n
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B21237
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A review of the Observations upon some of His Majesties late answers and expresses written by A Gentleman of Quality.
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Diggs, Dudley, 1613-1643.
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1643
(1643)
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Wing D1459
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24,210
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32
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to his immediate Father if his Father were absolute or to him and his common Father if his Father were a Subject Now if man in his particular and naturall capacity hath not originall Power of himselfe inherent in him he cannot have originall inherent Power by any civill capacity whatsoever And though upon the overthrow and breaking up of Kingdomes instance may perhaps be given that People have made themselves a King yet does not that prove the People to be the originall of Kingly Power no more thâ—n going upon crutches after losse of a legg proves crutches the originall and naturall way of going for people being by misfortune deprived of their naturall common Father and Soveraign must of necessity entertaine such supply of their losse as their fortune can best afford them And even in that case too their making of a King was no other then the choosing of one to beare the known Office of the true and naturall common Father For we must note they never made Kings by giving them power constitutive to doe so and so as they must have done if Kings had had nothing but commissionary authority from the people but they made Kings only by choosing one to beare the office and person of the same Governour that the law of nature had before described and authorized to command and governe Though therefore the ten Tribes of Israell rebelled against Rehoboam for refusing to releive their greivance made Ieroboam King and God forbad Rehoboam to warre against them for it yet this proves not That people have power of making Kingdoms or Kings For God himselfe had first declared that he would rend ten Tribes from the Kingdome of Iudah and that Ieroboam should be King over them And had Jeroboam and the people attended Gods will and pleasure in it as David after his annointing did he had beene a King and they a Kingdome not of their own making but of Gods But to shew how quickly the by-affections of the people pervert the right work of God when they looke not as well unto the way as unto the end we may see that for all this new Kingdome King were of Gods appointing yet when the people would in a way of their owne take upon them the Crowning of the man appointed God disclaimes the authorizing of what they did They set up a King saith God but not by me Hosea 8.4 and in recording the fact both in the first of Kings and againe in the second of Chronicles the Scripture directly telleth us that they rebelled That therefore God forbad Rehoboam to fight against them did not approve what the people had done for God tells the reason why he forbad them not because the people had done well but because the thing was of God which if God had not revealed Rehoboam might and ought to have reduced them to their obedience and howsoever the thing it selfe was of God yet to teach us that the people have not authority to doe the thing that he hath ordained without his espceiall appointment we see that when Abijah Rehoboams sonne with foure hundred thousand against eight hundred thousand pitched a battle upon the right of that Kingdome and committed the cause to God though Ieroboam had entrapped him in an ambush God gave such a sentence against Ieroboam and his people that after an overthrow and slaughter of five hundred thousand of them they were disabled from ever recovering strength in all Abijahs dayes And that Subjects for luck sake may take heed of making new Kingdomes or Kings this King the only instance of peoples King-making and yet in making of whom the people did only anticipate Gods purposed work became the instrumentall efficient of their finall destruction setting up the Idolatry which the people themselves had first affected his sinne through all his successours so adhered to them as that it never left them untill it had extirpated them from their own and transferred them captives into another Country To conclude this point when we heare God himselfe stiling himselfe a King a great King of Kings and telling us that the Kingdome is the Lords c who without reluctance of conscience and even horrour of it can yeild the power of Kings to be derivative and the People to be the originall of it for then God by setting himselfe forth in the name of a King does instead of presenting himselfe in a notion of magnificence and Soveraignty present himselfe under the notion of an inferiour and of a derivative from a more Soveraigne and originall Power whereas we see God never expresses his Power by the name of an Elder or of a Magistrate or any subordinate Authority how good or honourable soever Yea to be King of Kings is then no more then to be the derivative and creature of Kings As for the Peoples being the efficient and finall cause of the King If one knew in what sence the Observour would be understood he were soone answered For if he would be understood according to the propriety of his wordes as indeed that which he would maintaine does need he should Then is that position not only false but an impious falshood even full blasphemy for properly God and none but God is the efficient and finall cause of all things there being no difference betweene the efficient cause and the Creatour But if the Observour means that the people be the instrumentall cause of Kings the instrumentall cause and mediate end are termes of so extreame and notorious difference and consequence from efficient and finall cause as it is by no meanes to be pardoned him that he should meane the one and say the other Besides to understand him so does overthrow all that he drives at for if the People be but the instrumentall cause of Kings then can they not be the end of Kings no more then the instrument of any worke can be the end for which the work was made but contrarily the work is the end of the instrument and therefore greater then the instrument As for the people they are so farre from being the finall end of Kings as that they are not any way the end of them For government is the end of Kings of which the People are but the Subject and God alone is both the efficient cause and finall end both of the Government Governour and Subject to be governed As for that which he affirmes That though Kings be singulis majores yet are they vniversis minores and that wherein soever they be to be accounted Gods Lords Fathers Heads unto the People they are not so to be understood otherwise then as to the particular persons of men considered singly not jointly what an impudent insolence is it that one that has use of reason should so wickedly belye the principles of it to so infinite a consequent of absurdities For if Princes be Kings Lords Fathers Heads c to the single persons of the Subject only and not to the universality of
A REVIEW OF THE OBSERVATIONS UPON SOME OF HIS MAjESTIES late Answers and Expresses Written by a Gentleman of Quality OXFORD Printed by LEONARD LICHFIELD Printer to the Vniversity 1643. A REVIEW OF THE Observations upon some of His Majesties late Answers and Expresses IN the Contestation between Regall and Parliamentary authority finding by the frequent Declarations of the two Honourable Houses made unto the People like so many Appeales of the Body representative to the Body at large that the Soveraign judgement of all things is upon the matter brought unto the People I see not but that it is both lawfull and even the necessary duty of every private man that hath any understanding of the things in question to publish his particular judgement apprehension of them That from the most free and universall agitation of the truth some judgement from that vast body may be rendered to the appealors satisfaction And so having conceived that the Author of the Observations upon His Majesties late Answers hath upon this subject broached divers State-doctrines neither agreeable to our Lawes nor yet to true Christian Religion and that yet to the prejudice of the Truth they have as truths got a strong prepossession of menâ— mindes I have thought fit to offer such notions upon the summe of them as I conceive ought to bring them to a more serious re-examination Saving therefore to His Majesty His Right of Animadversion into the particular falsities insolences and seditious calumnies in the severall passages of that booke I only apply my selfe to the summe and scope thereof and that I find to be to this purpose First That God is no more Author of Regall power then of Aristocraticall and as much Author of usurped Dominion as of Hereditary That Power is originally inherent in the People and but derivative in Kings That the People are the efficient and finall cause of Kings That the name of King is not greater then of People That though the King be singulis major yet He is universis minor That He is not to be accounted a God a King a Lord a Father c. to the People conjunctim but divisim only That Treason so farre as it concernes the Prince is not so horrid in nature as oppression in a Prince c. In the better examining of these we finde That God creating man single left him not other meanes of multiplying then only by propagation and in propagating he gave the Rule and Soveraignty of the issues propagated to the Father of whom they were propagated and in defailance of the Father He gave the Rule of all the younger and consequently of their descendants too unto the first-borne Gen. 4.7 as we may see where God tells Caine Thy Brother shall be subject to thee and thou shalt beare rule over him So that all men in the beginning were born Subjects either to him that naturally was their Father or to him that by right of primogeniture was representatively the Father After the Flood the then common Father of the world having a family of three Sonnes of differing condition and they for the plantation of the then unpeopled world by Gods determinate fore-councell dispersed into three distant parts of it the elder Brothers right of Soveraignty over those younger through distance of place and want of occasion and meanes to exercise it became wholy neglected as upon like severance and search of new places of Plantation it in other places often after became But every Planter becomming so by himselfe a Father soon became a Family and from a Family grew into a Citty so into diverse Cities and at length into a Kingdome And though we first heare of the irregular Kingdome of the descendant of Cham yet find we also that Shem the eldest and blessed Sonne of those three was grown into the Soveraignty of a Kingdome and was the first King that ever was in the world for by the judgement and computation of the Learned Melchisedeck the King of Salem could be no other then very Shem himselfe Neither had the tenne Tribes of Israell when revolting from the sonne of David they said they had no part in David nor Portion in the sonne of Iesse any other meaning then only to inferre That David being neither their Father by nature nor in primogeniture by representation they were free from that naturall subjection unto his sonne which otherwise they implied they were bound to be subject to And indeed if there had not been an especiall ordinance of God in the case it had truly followed that being neither descended of Jesse nor Iesse the first borne of their common Father the rule of subiection which followed nature had not tyed them to obey his sonne The fifth Commandement it selfe proveth this naturall bond of subiection when as all Churches expound it it commands Obedience to Governours under the name of Parents only And that according to Gods saying unto Caine Soveraignty did rightfully follow primogeniture we may see it in this that as God promised Iacob the Soveraignty so he procured him the Birth-right formally transacted by Esaus sale of it Therefore a King being no other then a common Father by either naturall or legall Right neither the People nor any other Power then only God the Father of nature it selfe can properly be said to be the author of the being of Kings Next God hath not authorized Kingly Power in nature only but by his expresse promises before the law and by his ordinances concerning it in the law even before ever the people of Israell sought a King also by setling over his People the government of a King by sacrating that office with annointing by his own assuming of the name of King and by setting forth our Saviours Dominion over his Church by that name and office In all which if God hath done the like for authorizing aristocraticall or vsurped Dominion then is the Observour in those assertions to be justified but if not then is he in them an Author of lyes Yea God is more Author of what he ordaines and directs then of what he only permits and therefore more Author of good then of evill Wherefore to say vsurped Dominion referres as much to God as author thereof as lawfull hereditary Dominion doth is not only false but also blasphemous As for Power inherent in the People how should one imagine such a thing unlesse also he would imagine People to be juvenes aquilone creati men like grashoppers and locusts bred of the winde or like Cadmus his men sprung out of the earth where none deriving from any pre-existent Parents had all of them equall originall and power and therefore subject to no civill Power but what by agreement they themselves ordained But where man is borne of a Father to whom by the law of God and nature he is subject he is so farr from having inherent Power originally in him as that he hath not his own originall being but only in subjection either