strong and run upon him with so fierce a Stream that I suspect the soundness of his understanding for offering to attempt a thing in which he could reasonably propose nothing but infamy and disgrace to himself he seems to me to be got into the predicament of Dr Rolls and that even Hellebore and Anticyra it self are unable to restore him to his right mind so far are his Wits run a Woolgathering from it And now upon the whole matter I am very sure of the Victory which I have allready obtain'd by dint of Argument against him though he may possibly run away with the Triumph and I had much rather lose so fair a cause as mine is then gain a Scandalous Conquest by succeeding in his Victrix câ—usa Deis placuit sed victa Catoni POSTSCRIPT I Have two things further to add which occur-now newly to my mind and are I think material to the purpose the First as to the Regulation in generall the design of which seems to have been to displace all that were not at that time Communicants of the Church of England that being the interest which the Court thought fit at that juncture to encourage It is not my business in this place to weigh the Merits of Causes or of Persons neither do I at all intend by this to reflect upon the Persons Ejected as if they were defective in the discharge of their trust the contrary of which bating only what concerns my Friend Mr Hughes is that which I did always and do still very firmly believe but this I say that by this it appears that it was a Regulation not only made by him that had a Legall right to do it of which I have already spoken very largely but it was also such a Regulation as the Laws of this Land if they did not Expicitely enjoyn yet they did manifestly encourage and abett it being very incongruous to prosecute the same Persons upon account of their Religion which was no more then what the Laws put in Execution would certainly have done and yet at the same time to reward them with publick Salaries for the same services that Members of the Establish'd Communion were capable of performing with equall if not greater advantage to the House I say greater in reference to that part of the Governors to whom their service will always be most acceptable who have without question the most of the Gentleman in them and will at the long run prove the most generous Benefactors to us if they be not disobliged for he hath no Honour that hath no resentment I appeal to the greatest favourers of Mr. H. and others if a set of Papists were put into the House to fill up the respective Offices belonging to it whether they would then grumble at a Royall Regulation whether they would not allow the King a Power of Visiting in this Case whether they would not agree that the Ejection of such Persons was not only necessary but Legall too and Lastly whether they would not think it a very unreasonable thing that they that stand impeached and Condemned by so many Laws should be Encouraged with Salaries out of the publique Kevenue and preferred before those upon whom the Laws never look but with a kind and favourable aspect I do not in this make any odious comparison betwixt a Papist and Protestant Dissenter as if the one were as much to be discountenanced as the other but yet I challenge any man to shew a reason why a Papist should be Ejected which will not in the dry consequence and Inference of the matter affect and reach a Protestant Dissenter to whose dissent I cannot help it that the Laws are no friends and that he cannot be encouraged in an affair of this Nature without something that squints towards a dispensing Power Not to preferr can never be thought a piece of Persecution and the Government will always chuse its own Servants as it is but reason it should so that this Regulation being made by a Legall Power for a reason agreeable to the Laws I think it hath all the Validity and Strength that any Act in the World can be supposed to have Secondly the second thing I must Suggest is only in Fayrness to the other Side that I may not seem to conceal or smuggle any thing that hath a favorable Appearance towards them It is that our Orders run only during Pleasure therefore the Question is upon the Dissolution of the Commission whether that pleasure be not dissolved and I answer not because first durante beneplacito signifies till that Court otherwise determine which they never did Secondly though these express words had not been inserted yet the thing it self was plainly supposed we being all of us at the pleasure of that Court and of the King from whom they derived their Commission and holding by no other Tenure so that all the question here is whether all their Acts were vacated by their dissolution which I conceive they were not and I hope I have given some reason for it Thirdly and Lastly that pleasure being a reall Power can never dye like matter and motion that are always equall and the same taken in the gross neither can a greater pleasure be swallowed up in a less any more then a greater quantity can be and for this reason the pleasure or Power of the Commissioners can never be the pleasure or Power of the Court of Aldermen but returns back again to its Eountain the King to whose Royall Justice Goodness and Wisdom I am very willing to referr my Cause if Mr Hughes think fit to make his appeal to it In the mean time I would willingly see a reason before I abandon and relinquish my possession FINIS
to me in the Quality of Brethren I say I have a great deal of reason to expect and I do with great assurance wait for it that I shall not only have strict Justice done me if my cause come to be determin'd at that Barr but that I shall have all the Favour that Equity will afford me and such an Equity that is mixt with something of affection to a shrubb of their own growth that calls for no raines no dewes but what are Naturall and Hereditary to it for water and Refreshment I know no person in the Court of Aldermen whom upon this account at least I have not reason to believe my friend unless it be one Gentleman Sr Patiente Ward I mean before whom when I preached when he was Lord Mayor of this City I had the misfortune to leave him out of my prayer before Sermon for that it was an involuntary thing arising from an undesigning negligence without any ill intention I call the great God of Heaven and Earth to witness and this is no more then what I have affirmed a thousand times in the company of my friends when I had no interest to perswade me not to own it if the affront that was suspected had been reall on my part and it is further observable that I did not only omit him but the Aldermen Sheriffs and Commonalty too who are all of them prayed for upon these occasions now there is no man in his wits but must suppose me to have been quite out of them if I had design'd a Publick affront to so Venerable an Assembly so Illustrious a Bench so great and populous a City in which I had not only received my Nativity and a great part of my Education but in which I had at that time among all ranks so many favourers Godspeeders and friends and if after this any suspicion can remain upon the mind of that Gentleman that it was designedly done which to me it seems impossible that it should then I humbly intreat him if no other consideration will prevail with him to let the memory and old friendship of my deceased Father intercede with him for my forgiveness But if it be as I have represented that the true and only legall decision of the controversy between Mr. Hughes and me lies solely and entirely in the Kings breast unless he shall please to put it into some other hands Mr. Hughes knows who it is that preached a famous Sermon at Abingdon Assizes upon a most infamous subject the justification of the worst of parricides of the Execrable Murther of that glorious Martyr who fell a Sacrifice to the Church of England and the Protestant Religion He justifyed and gloried in that horrid Fact when many of the pretended Judges themselves had repented he Crucify'd the Royall Saint afresh and put him to an open shame before a numerous assembly and in the face of justice it self when others were washing off that bloud with their tears and would have been glad with the expence of their own lives to have retrieved the inestimable loss of his which brought so black a guilt and was followed by so miserable usurpation and confusion Now what favour can Mr. Hughes expect from the Royall Grandson of that Martyred Prince when the principles of that Sermon are levell'd at himself and at all Succeeding Princes whatsoever when Mr Hughes and his Partizans are angry though there be no good Subject but hath ever maintain'd that the Persons of Princes are unquestionably sacred notwithstanding the reall and gross exercise of Arbitrary Power whatever becomes of their Politicall capacity and Regall administration Mr Hughes may think it pleasant to wash his impure hands in Royall bloud but that was not that washing which the Prophet David required in all that minister in the holy things I will wash my hands in Innocence said he and so will I go to thine Altar It is true the act of oblivion pardons this crime but to pardon and to forget are two things to pardon and to reward are two more if Salmosius would have accepted of so small a pittance as the place of Hospitaller of St. Thomas Southwark he would have become the place and title very well because it was very suitable for him to eat the Kings bread who had defended his cause but Milton would certainly have been an awkward man in that station and what is Mr. Hughes I pray better then he unless it be that Mr. Milton understood reason argument and wit if he would but have employed those-talents to better purpose which Mr. Hughes does not but that Mr. Hughes is more malicious black and Saturnine in his Sermon then Mr. Milton in his book and that the one is more dull and Phlegmatique then the other John Goodwin a man of much more honesty and sense then Mr. H. being so far carried away by the Republican bigotry of those unhappy times which overflowed and bore-down Loyallty with a rapid and resistless torrent was content with his pardon and leave of retirement into a private corner without perking up impudently for preferments and rewards when he had so justly forfieted his life and the same was Mr. Milton's case who en deavoured to make some sort of attonement for his crime in the English History which he after Publish'd by offering up a devout sacrifice of praise and admiration to the memory of that excellent and incomparable King and giving him that great and lofty Character which he deserved but what hath Mr. H. ever done to make amends for his fault what instance can he produce of his sorrow repentance And yet so foul a crime so publiquely committed a preaching and a printed crime can never be said to be truly repented of without a preaching and printed fatisfaction for otherwise though there may be some inward compunction remorse yet the satisfaction the injury are to hold some sort of proportion with each other and to do a publique a notorious crime without a repentance and satisfaction equall to it does not come up to the nature of true repentance but it is like robbing our Brother of a Pound and paying him a Penny by way of Restitution which is but to continue in the Robbery still and rather to own and justify the fact then to condemn and disapprove it Mr. H. can farther inform us if he pleaseth who it was that vext and persecuted his neighbour for teaching a School without a licence and yet had no license for himself at the same time but answer'd to the name of Thomas instead of William to save his Bacon at a Visitation and he can tell us further of the self-same person how he stood engaged by promise for the payment of a sum of money and yet refused it after seaven years time under the protection of the statute of limitation and many other things Mr. H. can tell of that man when he hath a mind to furnish a Biographer with materials for the life of fo
matchless a worthy and if this man should happen to be the same with the t'other I doubt me he hath not yet repented of his Treason for this is treason too it is treason against humane Society which such principles and such practices would certainly destroy and this is the very foundation of Treason against Princes whose Persons are so Sacred above all other men not so much upon their own private account as for the sake of the publique which is highly concern'd interested in their safety and suffers in all the injuries they receive and thus much may suffice for the Character of Hugonides and his Freind whom I would not have treated at so rough a rate but that they have turn'd raillery into a pertinent thing and made it so absolutely necessary for me to expose them that it may appear at least there is no merit of congruity betwixt my small preferment and them What hath been said hitherto hath been upon occasion of the Stating of the Case as it was represented to Three worthy Gentlemen learned in the Law in order to obtaining their Opinions upon it I come now very briefly to say something with relation to the Opinions themselves by all which it is agreed that the ordinary Power of Visitation and inspection into the affairs and Officers of this House is in the Governors for the time being that is to say First in the Lord Mayor and Court of Aldermen and Secondly those other Gentlemen and Citizens that are deputed by them or allowed by their permission to manage and Transact the Hospitall Affairs and that the respective Officers belonging to it are not Charter Officers that have a fixt Interest and a setled right but only Servants at pleasure receiving wages for their work and to be dismist at discretion when the Governors think fit though behaving themselves well in their severall Employments they may be said to have an Equitable right and that it would be an Hardship in the Governors which they could not justify to themselves to turn them off against their wills in such Circumstances as these but however these Opinions do at least say thus much for us that the Persons claiming against us have no Legall right and that there is no necessary Connexion betwixt the Regulation of the Hospitall and the Restitution of the Charter so that Mr Hughes is very much out of the way when he insists so unskillfully upon a Legall right and proves himself to be as bad a Lawyer as he is a Divine or a man. But yet I confess there is one thing in the opinion of that great and Excellent Person Mr Sergeant Pemberion which I cannot perfectly assent to though I should not presume to own a difference in matters of this nature from a Person so profoundly Learned in his Profession but that the Success of our cause does in some measure depend upon it he is pleased to say that upon the Restitution of the Charter and the avoidance of that Commission that supply'd its place there were no Governors left either old or new but that it was perfectly at the discretion of the Court of Aldermen to regulate and order all those matters as they pleased but in an humble Opposition to this I presume to offer that the King being at all times vested with a Power of Visiting the Hospitalls and of making from time to time such Regulations in them as to his Princely Wisdom shall seem most meet and Expedient though the Commission be dissolved yet the Regall Power and Authority still remains and what a King hath done by vertue of his Legall and rightfull Power always inherent and vested in his Person that nothing less them a King can destroy so that those new Governors being a Constitutive and Essentiall part of this very Regulation they must stand Independent from the Court of Aldermen till the King declare them to have nothing to do in this House and the old ones that were Ejected whether Officers or Governors cannot be readmitted without the Kings consent the Kings Authority and the Validity of it in all those Acts to which it extends it self being always the same though indifferent Persons that are invested with it so that in all the Legall Jurisdictions of a King it is ille aperit nemo claudit he openeth and no man shuts he shuts and no man opens nothing but a King can dissolve those Obligations or annull those Rights which a Lawfull King hath Establisht And indeed it were a great incongruity in the King very unbecoming either his wisdom or greatness and a great diminution to his power if he should erect and constitute a Commission to regulate abuses in such things as do naturally and legally belong to his visitation and inspection and yet when the Commission was disolved the regulation should cease which would be to as little purpose as if no such regulation had ever been made only it would reflect a disparagement upon the King as weak and inconsiderable and pretending to more power then really he had for that regulation which is actually dissolved after the dissolution of that Commission by which it was made must needs have been unjust and unlawfull before it for lawfull and just things will-endure Nay I appeal to all the world what confusion it would introduce into the affairs of the City if all the acts of the Commissioners for the space of five years together should by the expiration or dissolution of the Commission be rendered null and void though yet upon supposition that the Charter could not be voided which I do not concern my self whether it could or no the Commission was so far illegall if we look down to it's root though its necessity may perhaps plead something in its excuse as I have hinted before but as for that branch of the Commission which concerned the Hospitalls it was as I have shewn strictly legall and therefore all those acts which pass'd under and from it of which the election of Governours and Officers were two must need be legall and consequently valid No Mr. Hughes do not please and flatter your little self with vain imaginations the regulation is as valid as the first authority from whence it sprang and that is the Kings though the Commission that managed and ordered that whole matter be now actually dissolved and I think I have given so very good reason for it that even your own impudence that face of yours which is your unquestionable Property and is peculiar to your self cannot without some small discolouring some streaks and Essays towards the Modesty of a blush oppose it any longer But yet I grant that though the Governors do manifestly hold by a Superior Tenure to any that the Court of Aldermen can give them yet the Charter being restored the Ordinary Visitation and Inspection of the Hospitall returns together with it and the Aldermen in the Course of things and in the Right and Power of Administration being Superior to