ruin of that from which they can reap somewhat of Advantage by its Preservation why then should we fancy Human beings and the best of Mankind Monarchs themselves whom th' Almighty has made Gods too to be guilty of so much Madness and Inhumanity Where do we find the worst of Fools designedly to destroy their Patrimony though many times through Ignorance they may waste them and that tho there were no Laws to terrifie them from turning Bankrupts or punishing them for Beggers when they have embezell'd their Substance Away then Malicious Miscreants with such sordid Insinuation such silly Suggestions against your own Soveraigns which your selves no more believe them likely to be guilty of than that they would set Fire to all their Palaces and Sacrifice themselves and Successors in the Flames But to Return to our Argument they 'll tell us perhaps What signify the Sanctions of the Imperial Laws and the Constitutions of an Absolute Empire to a Common-wealth or a Council of three States that are Co-ordinate or at most but a Monarchy Limded and mixt and where whatever power the Supream Magistrate has must have been first Confer'd upon him by the People where the Parliaments have a great part of the Legislative and their Soveraign in some sense but a Precarious Prerogative what signifies the Authority of a Britton or a Bracton whose very works by this time are superannuated who wrote perhaps when we had no Parliaments at all at least none such as now Constituted I won't insist upon in answer to all this to show the Excellency of the Civil Institutions that obtain o're all Nations that are but Civiliz'd I wont prove to them because already done That we don't Consist of three States Co-ordinate in the Legislative or that our Monarchy is Absolute and not mixt as I shortly may But yet I 'll observe to them here That the Romans themselves tho by what they call'd their Royal Law they look't upon the power of the Prince to be conferr'd upon them by the people yet after it was once so transferr'd they apprehended all their right of Judging and Punishing was past too And for their vilifying these Antient Authors and Sages of Law who did they Favour these Demagoges would be with them of great Authority and as mightyly searcht into and sifted Should I grant them they were utterly obsolete and fit only for Hat-cases and Close-stools that they both writ before the Commons came in play for their further satisfaction I 'll cite the same from latter Laws not two hundred years old and that our selves will say was since their Burgesses began And therefore to please if possible these Implacable Republicans I 'll demonstrate what I 've undertaken to defend from the several Modern Declarations of our Law For in Edward the Third's it was resolv'd that the King could not be Judged And why because he has no Peer in his Land and 't is provided by the very first Sanctions of our Establisht Laws by the great Charter it self their Act of Liberty they so much Labour in that not the meanest Subject can be Try'd or Judg'd unless it be by his Peers Equals much less so mighty a 〈◊〉 that has none and a Fortiori then with lesser Reason by those that are his own Subjects so far from being his Peers or Equals that they are together his Inferiors which has made me think many times these preposterous Asserters of so much Nonsense these Seditious Defenders of those Liberties they never understood did apprehend by the word Pares in the Law not the common Acceptation of it in the Latin but only the abused Application of it of our own English only to our House of Lords And conclude the King might be Judg'd by those we commonly call PEERS because they sit in that Honorable House and at the same to be Judg'd according to Magna Charta that all Judgements be per pares But does not each Dunce and every Dolt understand that the very Letter of the Law looks after this only that every Person be tryed at the least by those that are of his own Condition and that in the Legal Acceptation of the Word every Commoner of the Lower House nay every one of their Electors is as much a Peer as the greatest Person of the House of Lords In short they must put some such silly Seditious Exposition upon the plainest Letter when they pretend to Judge their King or else from the very Law of their own Liberty they labor in allow that their King has no Judges In that Act against Appeals that was enacted in the time of Henry the 8th the very Parliament upon whom the People and even these Republicans so much depend tells us even in the very Letter of that Law That it is Manifest from Authentick History and Chronicle That the Realm of England is an Empire That its Crown is an Imperial one That therefore their King is furnish'd by the goodness of Almighty God with an intire Power and Prerogative to render and yield Justice to all manner of Folk in all Causes and Contentions This by solemn Act is declared of their King this Excludes the People from Judging of themselves much more their Soveraigns This the Resolution of a popular Parliament they would make even the Supream and this by them resolved even in Opposition to that Popery these Panick Fools so much and so vainly fear Do not the Books the best Declarations of the Law let us understand that which they against the Resolutions of all the Law it self would so foolishly maintain that it was resolved in Edward the 4th's time That the King cannot be said to do any wrong and then surely can't be Judg'd by his very People for doing it when impossible to be done and was not this the Sense of all the Judges and Serjeants of the time to whose Opinion it was submitted was it not upon the same Reason a Resolution of the Law in Edward the 4th's time that because the Soveraign could not be said to injure any Subject therefore the Law never looks upon him as a disseisor a disposesser of any Man 's Right and all the remedy it will allow you is only Plaint and Petition Does not my Lord Coke himself that in several places is none of the greatest Assertor of the Right of the Soveraign fairly tell us least it should be vainly fear'd they should reflect upon the King 's own Misgovernment all the fault should rest upon the Officers and Ministers of his Justice Does it not appear from the Statutes of Edward the third that notwithstanding the strict Provision of the Charter for the Tryal by Peers that the King was still look'd upon as a Judge with his Council and Officers to receive Plaints and decide Suggestions and tho that and the subsequent of the next year provide against false ones yet it confirms still the power of the King to hear and determine
all Nations Confirm'd Thirdly that Monarchy or Kingly Government isso far of a Divine Institution as it has receiv'd from God himself an ‖ Express approbation as it has been Intimated to us from the Worlds Creation and its first Regulated Establishment as it is Constantly Visible from all the Phaenomenons of Vnalterable Nature and as it has been Continually transmitted to posterity by the special Appearances of providence for its preservation And Last of all let me but only subjoyn the Excellency of this truly ancient venerable and divine Form of Government a Monarchy and then the many Mischiefs that attend the popular one a Democracy and then let the most prejudic'd and partial person judge not only which of the two has been always reputed most Eligible but which of them he himself would most affect to Chuse Sir Walter Raleigh as Learned an Head-piece perhaps of the last Age as any that he hath left behind him in this a Person rather prejudic'd against Monarchy than bigotted for it no such Court-Favourite as the Mercury makes of Salmasius A Dirty Dissolute Parasite of Kings and Pander of Tyranny this Learned Historian lets us know That the first the most ancient the most general and most approved Government is that of one Ruling by just Laws call'd Monarchy and whatever wits our more modern Commonwealths-men pretend to be this Gentleman that was more sage than the wisest of them does not make paternal Right such a ridiculous thing as they would represent it but tells us that in the beginning the Fathers of Nations were then the Kings and the Eldest of Families the Princes and of such an Excellency is its Form that it is the clear result of unprejudic'd Reason and most agreeable to the sense and security of Mankind For as the natural Intellect it self by which I mean bare humane understanding when in the infancy of the World people were guided more by their own Fancies and the Paternal Power which then was all the Regal from the tenderness it might be suppos'd to have towards those that were their natural issues as well as their civil subjects had indulg'd vice and been less rigorous in Executing impartial Justice on Offenders whereby people were left more at Liberty I say Nature then and Necessity it self made them find the Inconvenience even of too much Toleration and made even the most foolish fellows apprehend as well as the wise that the Condition of reasonable men would be more miserable than that of brute beasts that an Inundation of Anarchy and Confusion would overwhelm them more than the first Flood Did they not by a general Consent submit to Government and obey those that were set over them to Govern For they found that when they were most mighty to oppress others might in time grow more so and do them as much mischief And those that were equal in their strength found themselves equally dangerous and mischievous one to another and that the most unbounded Licenciousness prov'd always to some or other the most miserable Bondage and Slavery And this natural Reason inclin'd them too to acquiesce under those Monarchical Forms that were then the Government of the Times and which the Israelites themselves desired in a more special manner tho' they were forwarn'd of its Absoluteness and told by Samuel that it would be Tyranny it self for the same necessity convenience reason and natural instinct that persuaded them to submit to Government in General did also suggest to them the Excellency of Monarchy in Particular For as by want of all Government their reason told them they could not long possess any right and that Liberty being only a License to do what they list and so left nothing to be wrong So the same reason suggested that these their Rights were best defended and soonest decided by some single Person that was Supreme than when a Multitude had the Supremacy for in that there being so many suffrages as there are men accordingly there might be so many several interests and factions which must both hinder any sudden determination as well as make the sentence liable to more partiality and injustice when it is determin'd This made the Senate of Rome so tedious always in its determinations and the people as uneasie and unsatisfied in their Decrees Their Praetores Quaesitores Judices Quaestionum selecti some of them having under them no * less than an hundred Commissioners might be said to confound Causes instead of determining them Their Agrarian Laws that were made for the Division of their Fields most of them having been given by Romulus and the rest of their Kings resolv'd their rights to them with Justice and satisfaction to the people while their Kings Reign'd that gave them and were the sole Judges of their own Laws But when they were confounded into a Commonwealth and the Senate set themselves to decide the divisions of their Commons and their Fields what Seditions Confusions and Unsettlement did they create So that the Reasonable presumption there is of a more Equitable and speedy distribution of Justice from a single Sovereign because suppos'd to be less prejudic'd and less unable to be prevail'd upon by favour or affection may very well be thought to have recommended at first a Monarchical Form afford us now asmuch reason for the retaining it In the next place A King being a perpetual Heir to the Crown insomuch that the Politick Laws suppose him never to dye and when in a natural sense he does the Crown still descends to his immediate Successor This will make him 〈◊〉 to preserve the Rights of it inviolate and perpetuate the same Prerogative to his Posterity Whereas the people in all their popular 〈◊〉 administer only for years or at most for Life and what should hinder them then from defrauding that Publick whose Administration they must either soon quit or at last leave to those to whom they no way relate I allow in most such Communities there is commonly special provisions made by their Laws that an abusing that power with which they are intrusted or a robbing the Common-wealth of part of its Revenue shall be punish'd with some grievous Fine or perhaps made Capital for which the Romans had their several rules and regulations for their Magistrates and men in Office But there being so many ways to be injurious to the Publick that can so easily by those that administer its affairs be kept private and conceal'd it must certainly be concluded that those that have an Hereditary Power of Publick Administration as all Kings and they alone have that their Interest obliges them to preserve its rights inviolate from an unwillingness that nature it self will implant in them to injure their own Sons Successors and Posterity Whereas the same Interest which certainly is the most powerful Promoter either of good or evil will incite Senators in a Commonwealth more industriously more seriously to endeavour to serve them selves It is the
his Forces invading this Nation do Enact c. That our Kings in the time of the Saxons Danes and some part of the Normans had more absolute Power over their Subjects than some of their Successors 〈◊〉 himself can't deny the Charter of Liberties being made but in the Reign of Henry the Third and when the People had less of Priviledges the Kings must be supposed to have had more of Praerogative therefore we shall examine only what and where the Supremacy is at present and where the Laws of the Land not the Will of the Prince do place it In the Parliament that was held at York in Edward the Seconds time The Rebellious Barons that had violently extorted what Concessions they pleas'd from the Crown in His like those in the three foregoing Reigns when they seal'd almost each Confirmation of their Charter in Blood were all censured and condemn'd and the encroaching Ordinances they made in those Times all repeal'd Because says the Statute The Kings Royal Power was restrain'd against the Greatness of his Seigniory Royal contrary to the State of the Crown and that by Subjects Provisions over the Power Royal of the Ancestors of our Lord the King Troubles and Wars came upon the Realm I look upon this as an absolute Acknowledgment of a Royal Power which is sure the same with his Soveraign sufficiently distinguisht here from the Parliaments or the Peoples co-ordinate Supremacy for those condemn'd Ordinances were lookt upon as Usurpations upon the Kings Supremacy which they call the Power Royal of his Ancestors and not as our Author would have too of the Sovereign power of Lords and Commons At the Convention of the three Estates first of Richard the Third where the Parliament call themselves so themselves expound also what is meant by it And say it is the Lords Spiritual Temporal and Commons of this Land assembled in present Parliament so that we have here the whole three States besides the King owning themselves such without assuming to themselves a Soveraign power recognizing the Right of Richard and acknowledging him the Sovereign And tho I shall for ever condemn as well as all Ages will their allowing his Usurpation a Right which was an absolute wrong yet this is an undeniable Argument that then they did not make their King Co-ordinate with themselves made themselves declared themselves three States without him and acknowledged their King the Sovereign and Supream That Act that punisht appeals to Rome with a premunire in Henry the Eighth's time gives this Reason why none should be made to the Pope nor out of the Kingdom because the King alone was only the supream head in it It tells us expressly That England is an Empire that the King the Supream Head has the Dignity and Royal Estate of the Emperial Crown unto whom a body Politick divided into Terms and Names of Spirituality and Temporality been bounden 〈◊〉 next to God humble Obedience c. Who has furnisht him with Plenary Entire Power 〈◊〉 Authority Prerogative and Jurisdiction Here his Body Politick is devided into Spiritual and Temporal here he is called the supreme Head and here I think is a full Recognition of his sole Sovereignty And 't is strange that what a Parliament did in Opposition to Popery should be so zealously contradicted by such Sycophants that pretend so much to oppose it In the next place he tells us of an error he lay under that he thought our Commonalty had not formally assembled in Parliament before Henry the Thirds time but of that now is fully convinc'd by the Labours of some learned Lawyers whom he names and lets them know too how much they are obliged to him for the Honor But I suppose he reads but one sort of Books and that such as suit with his Humor and Sedition and of that Nature he can meet with Variety for I dare avow that within the space of six years all that ever was or can be said against the best of Government our own all that was or ever will be rak't up for justifying a Rebellion and restoring a Republick from falsifyed Roll and Record from perverted History and Matter of Fact by Pens virulent and Factious with all the Art and Industry and whatever thought could invent for its Ruine and Destruction has been Printed and Publisht such an Universal Conspiration of Men of several Faculties each assisting with what was his Excellency his Talent in Treason which seemed to be the Task-Master of the Town and Monopolizer of Trades But our Politician might return to his old Opinion again did he but consult other Authors I believe as learned Antiquarians I am sure more Loyal Subjects who can shew him that the Saxons Councils call'd the Witena Gemotes had in them no Commons That the Conqueror call'd none of them to his great Councils none in those of his two Sons that succeeded nor none in any of the Parliaments down to Henry the Third my Lord Coke tells us of the Names this Parliament had before the Conquest as Sinoth Michel or Witena Gemote which he says implyed the Great Court or Meeting of the King and all his Wise Men And also sometimes of the King with his Council of his Bishops Nobles and the Wisest of the People and unless from the wisest of the People and all his Wise Men they can make up an House of Commons I am sure from this Authority they can have no proof and from Wise Men can be gathered nothing but such as were Noble or chief of the Realm for the meaner sort and that which we now call the Commonality were then far enough from having any great share of Learning or common Understanding and then besides these Wisest of the People were only such whom the King should think Wise and admit to his Council far from being sent by their Borroughs as elected Senators King Alfred had his Parliament and a great one was held by King Athelstan at Grately ' which only tells us there were Assembled some Bishops Noble-Men and the Wise-Men whom the King called which implies no more then those he had a mind should come But the Antiquity of a Parliament or that of an House of Commons is not so much the thing these Factious Roll and Record Mongers contend for 't is its Superiority Supremacy and there endeavours to make them antient is but in order to the making their Power Exorbitant and not to be controul'd by that of their King whom in the next place this Re-publican can scarce allow the power of calling them at his Pleasure and dissolving them when he pleases But so great is the Power of Truth and the Goodness of the Cause he Opposes that he is forc't to contradict himself to desend his Paradoxes For he tells us the King is obliged with an hear say Law which his learned in the Faculty and Faction can't find out yet to call Parliaments as often as need should be that is
as possible any Man could be guilty off and so all the Judges even of a power absolutely Usurp'd and wherein they profest so much the Peoples Privilege over-rul'd the Prisoner in his popular Plea 'T is true Littleton as Lilburn observ'd to them in one of his Sections says That an inquest as they may give their Verdict at large and special so if they 'll take upon them the knowledge of the Law they may also give it general But the Comment of Coke their own Oracle upon the place confirms the Suggestion I have made of Resolving it into the King's Judges For he says 't is dangerous to pretend to it because if they mistake it they run in danger of this Attaint and tho the fam'd Attorney General of those times with his little Law was so senseless as to allow it to Lilburn in the beginning of his Tryal tho at another at Reading in that time of Rebellion they made the Jury to be covered in the Court upon that account yet you see those even then the Justices of the Land tho but mere Ministers of a most unjust Usurpation would not let it pass for Law And the Refutation of this false Position is so far pertinent to our present purpose as it relates to prove the Peoples being so far from being qualified to be their Kings Judges that they can not absolutely Judge of the mere Right of a meum and tuum among themselves Several other Instances both the Books Rolls abound with that Evidence our Kings the only Judges of the Law in all Causes and over all Persons for in the 13th year of the same Richard the Second the Commons Petition'd again the King that his Council might not make any Ordinance against the Common Law and the King Graciously granted them but with a salvo to the Regalities of the Crown and the right of his Ancestors The Court of Star Chamber which the worst of times Abolish'd and my Lord Coke makes almost the best of Courts had heretofore Cognizance of property and determin'd a Controversie touching Lands contain'd in the Covenants of a Joynture as appears in the Case of the Audleys Rot. Claus. 41. Edward the 3d. There the King heard too a Cause against one Sir Hugh Hastings for with-holding part of the Living of the poor of St. Leonard in York as is Evident from the Roll. 8. Edward 4. p. 3. And tho the Proceedings of this Court were so much decryed by those that clamor'd so long for its Suppression till they left no Court of Justice in the Land unless it were that of Blood and Rebellion their High one tho the King in his giving year was so gracious that he made the very Standard and rule of his Concessions to be the very request of his People and gratified them in an Abolition of this Court establish'd by the Common-law and confirm'd afterward per Act of Parliament yet Cambden our Historian as well as our Coke our Lawyer could commend it for the most Honorable as well as the most Ancient of all our Judicatories and if they 'll have the Reason Why it treated of Matters so high as the Resolution even of Common-Law and the Statute it may be told them in the weighty Words of their own Oracle Because the King in Judgement of Law as in the rest also was always in that Court and that therefore it did not meddle with Matters of ordinary Moment least the dignity of it should be debased and made contemptible and tho by the gracious consent or rather an extorted Act of Grace the late King was forc'd to forego it yet the Proceedings of some Cases there may serve to show what a power our Kings had and ought to have in all manner of distributive Justice Several other Citations I could here set down to prove the Subjection of the very Common-Law to the Soveraign Power as Henry the Sixth superseding a Criminal Process and staying an Arraignment for Felony Henry the Seventh's that debar'd the Beckets by decree from pursuing their suit for Lands because the merits of the Cause had been heard by the King his Predecessor and also by himself before but these will abundantly suffice to satisfy any sober Person that does not set himself against all assertors of his Soveraigns Supremacy And then if Custom and Common Usage which Plowden in his Commentaries is pleased to call the Common-Law lies in many Cases Subject to the Resolution of the Supream Soveraign no doubt but the Statute the result of his own Sanction must of necessity submit and acknowledge a subjection to the same Power and that I think we have sufficiently prov'd already upon several occasions both from the Letter of the Laws themselves and our little light of Reason both from Arguments and Laws that have evidenc'd their own Resolutions to be reserv'd to the King and that we had Kings long before fore the Commons Commenc'd Conven'd ' or Concur'd in their assent to such Laws 'T is prodigiously strange to me that these mighty Maintainers of the Peoples Legislative and their Judicial Power eeven over their own Soveraigns cannot be guided by those very Laws they would have to govern their Kings thus you shall see a Needham a Nevil or a Sidney amongst our selves in all their Laborious Libels that the drudges of Sedition who seem to verify the Sacred Text in drawing Sin it self with a Cart-Rope in all that they tugg toil and labour in you 〈◊〉 see that they cite you so much as a single Statute on their side or if they do only such an one as is either Impertinently apply'd or as Industriously perverted And in the same sort does the Seditious Scot Buchanan and the rest of the Books of their discontented Demagogues that Northern Mischief that threaten'd us always with a Proverbial Omen till averted of late by the Loyalty of their latter Parliaments that have aton'd even for the last age and the persidiousness and Faction of the former those all in their Libels hardly Name you so much as one single Law of their Nation to countenance the Popular Paradox the pleasing Principle of the Peoples Supremacy which the poor Souls when prescrib'd by those Mountebanks of the State must take too like a Common Pill only because 't is gilded with the pleasant Insinuations of Natural Freedom Free-State Subjection of the Soveraign Power of the People and all the dangerous Delusions that lead them directly to the designs of these devilish Republicans i.e. a damnable Rebelion whereas would they but submit their Senses to the Sanctions of the Laws of their several Lands their Libels they would find to be best baffl'd by the Statute Books as well as their Authors to be punisht by them for their Publication 'T is strange that should not obtain in this Controversy which prevails in all polemical disputes that is some certain Maxims and Aphorisms Postulates and
upon this KEEPER of their LIBERTIES and you saw the Sycophant spitting in its mouth his Papers are the very Picture of this piece and the Representation of Rebellion with a Pen. The next that Mounts the Throne is STEPHEN and the little Right tho some Relation he had to the Crown to be sure won't be past by when this Author for the sake of his sinking Cause has caught at every Plank to hold up her Head in that desperate Condition and where he could not meet the least solid substantial Argument graspt at every empty Shadow And truly here he tells us that STEPHEN acknowledg'd his Election in the very Words of a Charter from the People and so would any man that had no better Title and tho I shall condemn his Usurpation can allow of his Politicks in letting them know how much he was beholden to them and yet that People were strong enough to pull off his Crown too which his own hands rather had put on for as Bradshaw told the King The People of England had constituted them a Court when that unanswerable Martyr observed not half their Consents did concur or were askt so also in this Case many of the Nobility most of the Commonalty lookt upon it as a manifest Usurpation and those whose Concurrence he had were but an handful of his Friends and at his Coronation had but three Bishops few of the Nobility and not one Abbot and also as Historians observe those very perjur'd Prelates and Lords came many of them to an ill-end or else to worse Calamities before their life was ended And the revengeful Cruelties of the Scot lookt somewhat like a Judgment for their Perjury when they spar'd neither the Gray-Hair for whom Reverence might plead nor the Tender-Infant for whom its Innocence but Butchered the one in their Beds the other on their Mothers Breasts the Barbarity of those avengers is as horribly describ'd in Mat. Paris But agen I cannot see why he was not as much an Invader as his Grandfather the Conqueror only that came from Normandy this out of Boleign that was forct to fight first with Harold an hardy Foe this his Invasion facilitated by the Weakness of a Woman but as weak as she was He knew her Title to be strong and as strong as this Author would have him with the People yet he found himself too weak only with the pretence of his Election to defend his Vsurpation found an Army of Flemmings would give him a better Title to the Crown than all this Power of Parliament to the Peopledom and that a good Garrison would hold out longer in his defence than our Authors House of Commons and in truth his being so good a Souldier would not suffer him to be long a precarious King an hundred thousand Pound of the good old Kings Treasure did him more good than all their suffrages it brought Men and Arms out of Britany and Flanders and built so many Castles for those sort of Monarch-makers till the whole Kingdom seemed all over but one CITADEL and all its Government but an entire Garrison Yet as secure as he thought himself both in Subjects and his Strength the prevalency of Right and Justice soon encompast him with as many Dangers His Nobility begin to be incensed against him and that out of a sence of his having injured an Heir The provok't Empress Lands with a strong party and her presence soon proclaimed the Justice of her Cause and made that Oath they had swallowed for her without any Operation or Effect to work now as strongly a pitcht Battle and a fierce one too is fought his Souldiers forsook him at last as well as his People and he forc't to sight so desperately for a cause that was ever as desperate till himself is taken a Prisoner by her from whom he took the Crown and tho she brought a War for her Right was received peaceably entered Her Capital City in Triumph and by her Loyal Londoners welcom'd with Acclamation and Joy And pray what was the Consequence now of this debarred Right but what always attends it BLOOD the Scots had with a Savage sort of a Revenge shed some for her before she spilt a great deal before she came to this and before the ground which had drunk so much Gore could be said to be dry at Winohester 't is moistened with a fresh supply and that too with a War of Women MATIL'D the Queen invades Maud the Empress the worst cause as it is wont prevails best and here the Right Heir is again driven from the enjoyment of her Right by that which commonly does it the SWORD and then at last after all the various events of WAR which whatever the Fortune be must still end in the loss of Lives that Just Astrea which then too seemed to have left the Earth and upon it nothing but wrong look't down from Heaven this fierce King in fuller Assembly than in what he was chose acknowledges that Hereditary Right against which he had fought and Henry in the Right of his Mother Maud to be the Lawful Successor And one would think now this succeeding Monarch's Right should have been allowed Hereditary beyond dispute beyond Contradiction when so much Blood had been spilt in the Defence of it when acknowledged so by this Popular Advocates own People and before them owned too by him that had interrupted the Succession and excluded the Right and Lawful Heir But what cannot Malice suggest or Faction invent till this transport against Government this rage of Rebellion suspends the calm Operations of the Soul and the dictates of common Sense till it hurry these blind Pretenders to verity into the greatest falsehoods transports them into perfect Lyes and Absurdities and to labour even against the Contradictions of Truth and Reason Here he still impudently tells us against plain matter of Fact the Confessions of his own Creatures the People and the Acknowledgment of his own Favourite the Vsurper That in all these Transactions there was no Consideration of any Right but what universal consent conferr'd And his Exception to our Henry the Second's Right must also now result from his Mother Mawds Title before I am glad we can get him to tolerate any such thing as Title at all but I would ask this Gentleman if he has any thing to dispose of whether he might not cedere de bonis as the Civilians in another Case Phrase it only for the letting his Successor and Heir Inherit it or whether upon such a Cession or making it over his Son should not succeed into this Patrimony till he had knockt his bountiful Father in the head or he was pleased to step aside into the next World to let his Successor have more Room in this I fancy he would be glad such a Resignation might pass without an Attournment of his LIFE too Maud the Empress was sufficiently pleased only with the Succession of her Son and
no particular Members questionable for what was done by the Body I consess the good excluded Members and the bubbl'd Presbyterian Senate would not allow it for a Parliamentaty Process and why because themselves did not sit in it and truly upon that unexpected and most blessed Revolution might hugg themselves and shrink up in a silent Joy that they were kept out And I cannot but smile to see two or three sit upon the Bench and upbraiding the Prisoner for pulling them out of the Parliament and making themselves none Persons whom Policy had only placed there when the poor Prince was forc't to compound with a party for a Crown forc'd to prefer those that had dethroned his Father before only the better to settle himself in it and to compass more easily the punishment of those that murdered him after Persons and a great one too that I could name that have serv'd him as ungratefully since and been as deservedly rejected Persons that had his late Majesty's Arms been but as Victorious as his Cause was good had been as much liable to the Laws and their Crimes as Capital for fighting him in the Field with an Ordinance of the House as those that brought him to the Scaffold and Butchered him on the Block from the time that their Tumults forc'd him to fly from their Houses they were no more a Parliament than those were afterward that pulled them out and it lookt a little loathsome to see some sit a simpering and saying all Acts must be past by the King who themselves once had helpt to pass many without and they could no more justify themselves had it been but their turn to be brought to Justice by their Memberships political Referrences to the two Houses then the Criminal at the Bar by his Relation to the Rump I have their own Authority for it their very Houses Act that they declared designed and actually made their King a Prisoner For they told the persidious Scot that his denying their Propositions and what were those but Expedients to destroy Him had debar'd him of his Liberty and that they verifyed too when they had got their poor purchase at Holdenby in a usage of their Prince with a restraint that would have been Cruelty to a Peasant and which even his very Murderers enlarged when their Joyce took him from his Jaylers And I am sure t is provided that to Imprison him till He assent to Proposals shall be High-Treason by particular Act as well as to Murder him is made so by the 25. And whatever the Mildness of Mr. Hunt the Moderator of Rebellion would have this Mystery of Iniquity would not have it so much as remembered it was these his own darling Daemagogues whom he defends and adores and that even for Restorers who stript him in his politick Capacity anticipated his Murder and then left his naked Person to be persued by the Wolves that worried it they had turned their House into a Shambles and that of Slaughter and were the Butchers the less Bloody that only bound Him and left to their Boys the cutting of his Throat yet this Barbarity must be defended this extenuated by them and the help of their Hunts and such Advocates the guilt not to devolve to each individual Member because an Act of an Aggregated House But base Caitiff's to use even the very Lawyers own Language your selves know that a politick Body may be guilty of a most political Treason and tho the Laws tell us it has no Life or Soul and so can't suffer yet it s constituent Members may lose both be Hang'd and Damn'd in their proper Persons and that for committing it too against such another political Constitution It would otherwise be a fine Plea for Corporators that have been many times Defendants in the Case when their King has been Plaintiff And against whose more dangerous Sedition there was lately made special Provision by a particular Oath Lastly to conclude the Confutation of this sad silly sort of Sophistry this Seditious Nonsense 't is shrowdly to be suspected that from the same sort of Sophisters fallacious Inferences was first insinuated that prejudicial Opinion I call it so because it looks like a Doctrine of some concerned party That Societies were not punishable in the next World for the Villanies they had committed in this That is the Members were not to suffer there for what they had acted in Relation to such a BODY here this Religious Absurdity has been publisht by some Seditious Pens from the Press I wish I could say not imposed upon Loyal ones too both from that and the Pulpit for Errors especially when coloured with the bait of Interest tho first hatcht by the Brooders of all bad Principles till well examined may delude the very best I know it may be returned with some seeming Reason that Crimes committed here as a Member of a body politick can't well in Justice be laid to the Charge of any particular Person hereafter for upon the dissolution of the natural one the Relation to such a Community â—â—asing the Guilt and Crime contracted should dye too But the Judge of Heaven has declared he won't be mockt tho they thought those of the Land might How contentedly would some of the Regicides have given up the Ghost could they have pleaded to the Almighty their Innocence of the Royal Blood from the shedding it in Parliament But tho National Sins may require reasonably the sufferings of a Nation and no more than what for this very Sin our own has since suffered therefore to suggest the single Individual the singular Sinner shall escape with Impunity hereafter because not punisht here or that because several of them suffered here for that Martyrs Blood and the Treasons of an Vniversal Body seem'd to be punisht in as general Conflagration that therefore the Criminals have superseded their sufferings in Hell and may now dare Heaven for my part seems an Opinion as ridiculous as the Popish Purgatory and their being saved by a fantastick Fire T is almost an Irreligious excuse for all manner of Crimes and Immoralities the Constitutions Circumstances of Men being so various that I dare avow scarce any Villany but may be committed by Communities or the Politick Relation of the private Person to some publick Society In short such Law and such Divinity would make the worst of 〈◊〉 that is incorporated ones fear Hell no more than they would the Hangman and baffle the Devil as well as the Gibbet And I may well here so warmly condemn these sort of damnable Doctrines when they were so hotly maintained by the rankest of our Rebels and Republicans and this very Daemon this Devil of Sedition can only countenance his Rebellious Positions with the making use of His Majesties Authority for the Ratification of his Proposals that is the Destruction of his own Person For 't is a great Truth I wish I could not say an experimented
Optimacy is made up of so many more And where then into what form to whom shall we run for the best maintaining of this popular Darling this dangerous Violation that has been clamoured for rebelled and fought for the Peoples RIGHT but to that Soveraignty which our very Laws say can do no wrong to a Monarchy where Mechanicks can never meddle with Affairs of State to make them truckle to their own or the Nobility so powerful as to be all Soveraigns and under what Prince can we better acquiesce for this enjoyment than the present that has so often declared for its Protection And shall the Speech of some Noble Peer be better assurance promise more than the word of a King All Subjects under him have either Riches or Honor for their private Aim to make them act more partially for the publick and which the Laws presume therefore they may injure and have therefore made the greatest punishable But him exempted from all Statutes that are Penal And these sort of Arguments I can assure them their King himself has used to prove the publick Interest his own and that he alone of all the Kingdom can be presumed most impartially concerned for the good of the publick A Reason worthy of so good a King and which the worst the most Seditious Subjects cannot Answer Did not the Parliament in Richard the Third's Time give even that Vsurper an Arbitrary Power greater than any they can dread now from their most Lawful Soveraign Did not they declare him their Lawful King by Inheritance tho they knew they made him Inherit against all Law Did not they declare it to be grounded upon the Laws of God and Nature and the Customs of the Realm whereas we now can oppose this Divine Right from the panick fear of making our true Legal King too powerful and the Succession of a Right Heir must be questioned by our Parliaments now when their Predecessors declared it unalterable even in a wrong Did they not to him but an Usurper a Tyrant own themselves Three Estates without including himself and say that by them is meant the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons and shall the Press be pestered under our undoubted Soveraign and the mildest Prince to make him Co-ordinate with the People Did they not make particular Provision in Parliament for the preservation of His Person that was the very Merderer and Destroyer of His Subjects And shall our 〈◊〉 ones Associate for the Destruction of the mildest Monarch whose greatest Care is their Protection Was this Monster ever questioned or censured for the Murder of several of His Subjects as well as the more Barbarous Butchery the spilling almost of his own Blood in his Nephews and must our most gracious one stand the mark of Malice and Reproach and that only for desending that of his Brothers who Reigned more Arbitrary and managed all Affairs more Monstrously than this very Monster of Mankind And must a Parliament be now the Manager of the mildest Monarch and think him dangerous if not governed by themselves The two Succeeding Henries had their Power as much confirmed Henry the 7th had his Negative Voice the thing those Seditious discontented Grumblers so much repine at maintained asserted for his undoubted Prerogative It is at present by the Law of his Time no 〈◊〉 if the King assent not A Prince beloved and favoured only because he was their King who tho he had as many subsidies granted more than any before him His Subjects you see never thought it a Grievance then to contribute to their 〈◊〉 being Great but acknowledged his Supremacy even under their greatest pressure His 〈◊〉 upon penal Statutes Historians call and the Law the most 〈◊〉 way for raising of Money that was ever used yet still had he the Hearts of his People as well as their Purses They thought Rebellion then could not be justifyed with clamor of Oppression as since by Ship-money and Lone tho levyed by a King whom themselves had Opprest The simplicity of those times made them suffer like good Subjects and better Christians when the refined Politicks of such Authors and a 〈◊〉 age can tell them now to be Wise is to Rebel I need not tell him who managed Affairs in Henry the Eighth's Time when Parliaments seemed to be frightned into Compliance with a Prown and Bills preferr'd more for the pleasure of the Prince than the profit of the People Their Memberships then so far from medling with the measures of the State that they seemed to take them for their sole Measures so far was then an Order of the House from controuling that of the Board And I can't see that the Peoples Petition of Right has since 〈◊〉 away too the King's Prerogative yet it was affirmed for Law in this King's Time that he had full power in all Causes to do Justice to all Men. If the Parliament or their Council shall manage Affairs let them tell me what will become of this Power and Law His Son Edward succeeded him and tho a Minor a Prince whose Youth might have given the People an opportunity for an Encroachment upon his Power and the Subject commonly will take advantage of the Supremacy and that sometimes too much when the Soveraign knows but little what it is to be a King I am sure they were so Seditiously Wise in that Infancy of Henry the Third and yet he had Protectors too as well as this But notwithstanding such an Opportunity for the robbing the Rights of the Crown you shall see then they took the first occasion for the asserting them In the very First year of his Reign it was resolved that all Authoritie and Jurisdiction Spiritual and Temporal is derived from the King but this Republican has found out another Resolution of resolving it into the power of the Parliament And in this very Reign too it was provided as the common Policy and Duty of all Loving Subjects to restrain the Publishing all manner of Shameful Slanders against their King c. upon whom dependeth the whole Unity and Universal weal of the Realm what Sentence then would the Parliaments of those times have past upon Appeals to the City vox patriae's and a Plato Redivivus upon a Libel that would prove the Kings Executive power of War forfeitable and that the Prerogative which is in the Crown hinders the Execution of the Laws tho I am sure those very Laws are the best Asserters of the Prerogative there next resolve would have been to have ordered such an Author to the 〈◊〉 by the Hands of the Hangman instead of that Honorable Vote the thanks of the House In Queen Mary's Time too the Law left all to her Majesty tells her all Jurisdiction does and of Right ought to belong to her In Queen Elizabeth's Time what was Law before they were obliged even to Swear to be so Every Member of the House before qualified
too that before the Conquest and for some time after Parliaments were held three times in one year They had then their Easter Parliaments their Whitsunday Parliaments their Christmas Parliaments but they know then that they were but so many Conventions of that Nobility and Clergy their King should please to call And which they did Arbitrary at their Will more frequently or less as they thought convenient and the Books tell us they many times were held but twice a year now if these Gentlemen will tell us so much of old Statute Laws why should not Custom which is Resolved by the very Books to be the Common decide the case too for the King as well as the other which is their own must for the People and then we find Our Kings had the sole power of Convening Parliaments by a long prescription of whom where and as often as they pleased Are not all our Judicial Records Acts of Parliament Resolved to be but so many Declarations of the Common Law and that by all our Lawyers even concerning the Royal Government which they make the very Fundamental Law of the Land and tell us That by Common Law is understood such things as were Law before any Statute by general and particular Customs and Maxims of the Realm Now if Statute must be but Declaratory of these Customs of the Kingdom how can it be concluded but that such Acts as directly contradict any of them must be absolutely void for by the same Reason that they can with a Be it enacted void any part of it they may the whole With the same Reason that they can invade any part of the Prerogative of their Prince which the Book tells us is the principal part of the Common Law they may abolish the whole make Killing no Murder and except Persons from the Punishment of Treason Does not this Common Law it self void any Statutes that are made against the Prerogative of their King Was it not in this very Edward the 3ds time that it was so Resolved even to the nulling three several Acts that put Pardons out of the Princes power The boldest of these Anti-monarchical Zealots cannot deny but that by the Common Customs of the Realm it always was Our Kings undoubted Prerogative to call and dissolve their Parliament when they pleased Chronicle confirms it Law Resolves it may practice for ever maintain it Now I cannot see why these Statutes that contradict the Customs of the Realm in determining their King to call Parliaments which the Common Law hath left at his Liberty should not be as much void as others that upon the like Reasons have been Resolved so And if the Common Law can avoid any particular Act of Parliament against the Prerogative of the Prince as we see it did more than one If Stanfords Authoty be Law then the Conclusion is unavoidable That for the same Reason it can any or all And in my poor apprehension that Act it self of the late Kings which reasonably repeals that of his Martyred Fathers that Act with which these reproachful fellows upbraided in their prints their deceased King is so far from countenanceing their clamorous Cause that it corroborates and confirms our own Case for it tells us the very Reason of repealing those Statutes To prevent intermission of Parliaments And what is that but what we say the Common Law would of it self void an Act as they say in derogation of his Majestys just Rights and Prerogative inherent in the Imperial Crown of this Realm for the Calling and Assembling of Parliaments Nay they tell us besides of Mischiefs and Inconveniences the two main matters the Law labours to avoid might be the Result of such an Act and endanger the safety even of King and Subject And what pray now was this Statute of Charles the First but what some even of these Factious Fellows themselves confess only a Reinforcement of the two Edwards If it were no more by the same Reason they are gone too as being against the King's Prerogative and in Derogation of his Right But Factious Fools that baffle themselves before they can be confuted by others the Statute they repealed did reinforce indeed those of Edward but it was with a Witness even as they resolved it with an invading the Rights of the King and endangering the Ruin of the People but still 't is true in that latter clause of their repealing Act they prevail upon their King to grant them a Triennial one how far obliging I leave their Oracles of the Law to Judge For if our Kings have had it by their prerogative indefinitely to call Parliaments by Custom or Common Law 't is as much against both for him to be obliged to convene them in three year as two one or without Intermission And I cannot see how the last enacting Clause is consonant to the Repealing Preamble which is so mighty for the Preservation of the Prerogative and we well know under what Circumstances of State Affairs then stood the People could not have more than so good so gracious a King was even in Policy ready to grant it was within a year or two of his being placed upon the Throne of his Father And a Turbulent Faction as furious again to pull him out A Seditious Sect had but just then alarm'd him that were setting up their Christ's Kingdom before his own was hardly settled Sots that thought their Saviour the great pattern of a Passive Obedience could be pleased with the Sacrifice of Fools and Rebels and an active Resistance unto Blood that has commanded us even to suffer unto it and even in the same Season and Session as damnable a Conspiracy detected as this Hellish one so lately discovered Arms seiz'd the Tower to be taken and an Insurrection contrived the parting at such a juncture with his Prerogative might be the product of his desire to please the People 't is too much to take the forfeiture in his own wrong when in this very particular the same Law provides so much for the Prince's Right But they 'll tell us the King by his passing such a Bill has parted with his Power and Prerogative But then do not the Laws tell us it cannot be past away Was it not resolved by all the Judges but in his Grandfathers time That himself could not grant away the Power of Dispensing with the Forfeitures upon Penal Statutes and why because annext to his Royal Person and the Right of his Soveraignty And shall it not be so much our Soveraign's Right which common Custom the Fundamental Law of all the Land has invested him with the convening of Parliaments at his pleasure But for my part for my Life I cannot apprehend did there lie such a great Obligation upon his Majesty from this his own very voidable if not void Act how 't is possible to bring him at the same time within the Letter of the Laws of
such States-men whose Politicks are best understood from the Measures they take and who seem many times Fools in the dark till they disclose themselves to be the greatest Villains When I saw him settled for Excluding the Crown 's Heir we soon saw the meaning of Presumptive which before seem'd in so great a Man a little nonsense But I can tell them of one-sense more it might have had That is the Duke was but his Presumptive Heir because he presumed he should Destroy him Some men of the Law would laugh at such Sophisters of the Faction And truly they even at themselves should they maintain the Youngest Son in Burrough English was no Heir Apparent who can be dispossest by latter Birth as well as a Brother or Collateral but it was the want of his Lordships Law that made him abound with so much Sophistry and so little Sense For my Lord Coke lets us know that a Collateral Heir is as much an Apparent one as the Eldest Son but only this says he is not within the Statute Tho as great a Judge and as good was not so Dogmatical in this point who as he had Reason so he left room too for doubt tho the Quaere in his first Edition has been very industriously omitted in the second I have been the longer upon this to let the Divine see that he may be much out in his Law and that tho he would have Excluded the late Collateral Heir from his Oath of Allegiance his preservation might have been brought in within the Statute of Treason and the Doctor if he pleas'd might be Hanged for him as well as Perjur'd 'T is pretty pleasant to me to Observe how men of these sort of principlescan prevaricate for the Promoting of their own Cause and the Divinest of them all run to the Devil with a Lye in their Mouth at the same time they in their Conscience believe the contrary to be true No Soul Living but will believe this Libeller when so near Ally'd to the Gentleman of the Law we so lately left would entertain assoon the Damnable Doctrin of a Muggletonian as dispense with the belief of a Divine Right since his Associate in their Hotch-potch of Scrible Hunt has rendered it altogether as Devilish yet what that Lawyer won't allow this Body of Divinity is forced at last to prove viz. That even the Roman Emperors Reigned with a Right Divine and that all their Empire was Hereditary and this he is seriously bound to maintain too as the only Basis and foundation for his Rebellious Book so that these prevaricating Jugglers with a turn of an hand can make the two several Extreams serve for the same purpose when it will make for their Cause they shall make those Crowns Hereditary whom all Authors and all the World acknowledge Elective let it but cross the Interest of the Faction the same pens shall prove you a most Elective Monarchy from one absolutely Hereditary The Roman Empire was certainly from Caesar their first to this Julian himself and even the very last of their Emperors uncertain in it's Succession sometimes a Right Heir would interpose or an adopted one but still either set up by the Souldiers or depended upon their permission And how it could otherwise well be no man can well imagin when their standing Armies were continually in the Field and a new Monarch commonly created with a Shout and Salutation of a Legion so uncertain was their Succession that they seldom had so much as Certainty for their Lives Look upon the List which I have leisurably examined and you 'll find from Caesar that was stab'd in the Senate to their Apostate Julian whom they would have a Christian assassinate in Persia I am sure half if not more were Murdered or destroy'd by some prevalent Faction or a mutinous Army and most of the Purples they wore were dy'd in their own Blood Julian's Caesars are just as well apply'd here to the Succession of our Prince of Wales as the Postscript has the Confirmation of the Prince of Wales to prove the Legislative of the House of Commons On the other side our own Monarchy for fifteen hundred years Hereditary and that to be proved from all Chronicle and History have the same sort of Pens and whom this Author vindicates too with his own endeavoured to make merely Elective I can't resolve this Spirit of Contradiction into any thing less than an absolute Conspiracy among themselves for the Vindicating rather Pagans and Infidels the Government of Rome or Constantinople before the Constitution of our Church or the Establisht Monarchy Upon the Publishing this pernicious piece and its falling into my hands I remember tho not much read in the History of the Church or the works of a Socrates or a Sozomen that I had casually lighted in one of them heretofore upon the passage of Jovian's this Apostat's immediate Successor being saluted Emperor where the pious Prince told them he would never Reign over Pagans upon which they Reply'd they were all Christians and as such had submitted and not opposed the Government of a Julian because their Lawful Emperor a President so directly contradictory to those he brings that it was a sufficient Prepossession to me against the profest Sincerity of the piece Paganism is as much obliged to this Apostate Church-man as the Christian Religion has receiv'd from him the greatest disservice he represents to us in several places his Pagan Emperor even with the Meekness of a Moses and with such a command of Spirit and Temperament of mind as if he would have him rather Worshipt as a Saint than Curst for a Persecutor he makes him to take Reviling patiently as if he 'd let us know he also could imitatehis Christ who reviled not again with such mollifying expressions in several places to the very reproaches of the meanest as if he would recommend the admiring of him for an Hero which makes me remember his dying Words I met with once in Ammianus Marcellinus so full of Magnanimity and all the highest Expressions of a Moral Vertue that of an Expiring Pagan he seem'd to me the most like a dying Christian But on the other side those Pious Souls those Glorious Martyrs fam'd for their Primitive Meekness and Moderation that in the midst of Tortures have accounted it worthy to suffer for the sake of their Saviour blest their Persecutors in Groans in imperfect sounds and unarticulated accents of Agony and Anguish that tir'd the Invention of their Tormentors as well as baffl'd their Tortures and with exalted Affection of Spirit Triumph'd in the midst of Flames These has he 〈◊〉 represented for the most Malicious Seditious and Rebellious Brood of Christians that ever breath'd under any Government altogether Pagan What good the Protestant Religion can receive from such a Representation of the Primitive Christians must be in pleading prescription to a warrantable Rebellion and what Obligation Christianity it self has
our Princes of their Arbitrary Power as well as they have borrowed from the same Senseless Soul as silly and Seditious stuff But least our Republicans as they really do should rely too much upon Samuel's frightful Description of an Arbitrary Prince which they now-a-days too much make the Bugbear of the People as if their Dogs can worry the best Government when drest in a Bear-Skin 't is the Sense of some Learned Men that the Prophet gave them only this draught of a Monarch to let them know the extent of his power and as Sir Walter says to teach the Subject to suffer with patience any thing from the Hands of his Soveraign and I think that unfortunate Gentleman when he Pen'd most of that Excellent piece as a Prisoner had no Reason to be suspected for a Dissembling Flatterer of Kings as Brutus representsany one that defends his Soveraign's Right for a Traytor Betrayer of the People as Hunt has it or as Needham Debauch'd with the Brutish Principles of MONARCHY but I am sure may be allowed to have had more than them all In the next place the Laws of Nature of all Nations and particularly our own all absolutely exclude the People from being Judges in the Case of their King For the first It is the most Preposterous and Unnatural Inversion in the World that inferior Subjects should be invested with such a Power as common Sense will not admit to be lodg'd tny where but in the Supream they may as well invert the common Course the constant Order of unalterable Nature it self expect the Sun and Lamp of Heaven should no longer move in an Orb so high but Stars of the meanest Magnitude set up for the sole Dispensers of the day and the simile for ought I see is not so Foreign neither for we find there is more than a mere ordinary Analogy between that Harmonious Symmetry of the World and such a System of Government as if that Eternal Protoplast had found it most agreeable for the frame of the Universe which he the very God of Unity had form'd as if the Institution of the one were nothing less Divine than the Creation of the other And for this I dare appeal even to the Almighty and that with better Authority than Mr. Harrington with his Antient Prudence The God of Heaven who by all unless they be Barbarous Heathens is allowed to be but one and he himself is pleased to call Kings his very Vice-gerents here on Earth and the very Polytheists of Old Rome that had their Gods for almost every day as numerous as they say the Modern Romanist in his Calendar of Saints yet they among the many Deities they ador'd still lodg'd the Supremacy in one and ascrib'd all the Government all the sole Supream Power to their Mighty Jove For this he framed one Sun to Rule by Day and a Moon by Night For this he Justified that paternal Right in one Man which even their Aristotle a Heathen Born bred under a Republick reckons for a sort of Monarchy But I confess such a sort of Argument can not be concluding with Men that will oppose Heaven it self and all the Harmony of its Creation rather than be convinced That their own Models end commonly in Consusion and are best represented in the Primitive Chaos For the Second Consult but the Imperial Laws and the Codes of Justinian Laws that were Collected from other Nations as well as made by their own Laws that their Solon and Lycurgus with all their Attick Legislators all the great Republicks of Greece which these Seditious Souls so much extol could never have reform'd and you 'll find what provisions those make for the Supream Magistrates being the sole Judge The resolutions of some of those Heathens of the Royal Authority their Humble Submission to the Supream Jurisdiction in all Causes and over all Persons as our Protestant Oaths have it one would think should make the boldest of our Christians blush that can run up resistance at the same time they are Sworn to submit and obey these their Laws which for their equity have obtain'd even thro the universe these tell us That the King is both the Maker and sole Interpreter of the Laws that what ever pleases the Prince has the Power and efficacy of a Law and that 't is a Crime equivalent to Sacrilege it self to resist a Proclamation or Edict of their Soveraign that he himself is bound by no Law and then I am sure can't be judg'd by any and that he is exempted from them here on Earth because Subject to none but the Judge of Heaven And for fear least Arguments drawn from the Laws of Nature and all Nations should be insufficient to convince men of such Seditious Sentiments we 'll for Confirmation of the Third Subjoin the Resolution of the very Lawyers of our Land and they tell us too what the God of Heaven and almost the Universal Concurrence of all the Nations upon Earth have agreed in before our Britton as I 've shown before has in effect with the very digest of the Imperial Law made our Statutes to consist in the Will and Pleasure of the Prince only qualifies it with this Insignificant Restriction That it must not be understood of an Absolute Will and Ungovernable but such as is guided and regulated by good advice and the Rules of Equity and Reason and if this be a Warrantable Resolution and I warrant you the rankest Republican will take his Authority to be good should it in any place favour their Anarchy then it must be unavoidably concluded that where the Law is the Princes Will none of his People neither as aggregate or Jndividuals can be Judges of its Violation neither can it according to common Sense without the greatest Solecism and Absurdity be said by him to be violated at all for where the Custom of the Kingdom as it must be in all absolute Monarchies has plac'd the sole Legislative Power in that which is Supream There the same Will or Moral Action of the Sovereign that breaks an old Edict is nothing else but an Enacting of a new and the Common Objection that our Republicans Flourish withal against this is That then Murder and Sacrilege might be the Laws of the Land because perhaps it has been heretofore the pleasure of our own Prince But as such Observations are full of Venom and Spight so they are as much impertinent and nothing to the purpose for whether our own old English Lawyers had restrain'd the meaning of the Word WILL to a WILL guided by right Reason and Judgment no Person of sober Sense but must Imagine that the very Principi placuit of the Romans was as much restrain'd to the Rules of Reason and Equity and therefore their Tiberius Caligula Nero and Domitian were as much Tyrants and by their own Authors so are term'd as if they had been bound by the
it be but of a Gift to the publick use much more then will it oblige him in his promised Faith and Allegiance But here in this Case there is not only a Stipulation between the Soveraign and every Subject but also between the several Subjects to one another for 't is a consent upon Condition among themselves that this Man transfers his Power to some single Soveraign because the rest have does or design to do it so that the Person upon whom the Supremacy is confer'd is secured upon a double Obligation both of that which is made among them all to themselves and that which to him is made by them all and therefore that Opinion of Mr. Sidney of the Power of the People being delegated to some particular Persons the Major part of which can act for the whole Kingdom is even unreasonable according to the Notion of their own Hypothesis For while he supposes it a Natural Liberty and Original Power that the People have at the same time he lays down a Position that destroys it For 't is Unnatural and against Nature if they consider it that the major part should determine it against the Minor and be taken for the consent and Approbation of the whole when it is to be turned by a single suffrage and one casting voice And this carrying it by a Majority is against the Nature of their Original Liberty for we see that even in all Seditious Assemblies and tumultuary Meetings every Man would have every thing carried his own way but the being concluded by the Major part has always been the result of some civil Institution in the Government that thought it reasonable things should be so carried for an avoiding of Confusion and Disorder so our Representatives in Parliament are chosen by the Majority of their Electors and they pass their Bills when elected by pluralities of Voices but this proceeds from President Regulation Institution Custom and Law and yet we see that many times notwithstanding these receiv'd Rules and tacit Agreements to which all have submitted they are loth in their Elections to stand to their own accord in such Cases and that those that have lost the day or the Cause by some few voices are restless tumultuary and their natural Liberty that is in herent in every individual so prevalent that what they have lost by Law they endeavour to compass by force or fraud and from that has proceeded those Riotous forcible Decisions of some of our Elections those clan destine and fraudulent ones of others from that proceeded in our late Confusions even in Parliamentary Affairs The Remonstrances of the Army Excluded Members the Impeachment and Imprisonment of the Eleven Members Prides Purge The Peoples Agreement Abolishing of Lords House and at last Olivers Dissolution for the Independant Faction prevailing in force would by no means be concluded by Law the Presbyterian suffrages were all along the most numerous in the Senate and by all their Presidents in Parliament must have carried every Vote by the Majority This the Independant that fill'd not above the third part of the House found to their grievance saw themselves still out-voted by Law and so be took themselves to their armed Suffrages and their Legislative Swords Now tho the plurality of Voices tho against their Natural Power of the People for they don't like it even in Parliaments now since things are not carried all to their liking may be allowed to determine the Debates in a great Senate conven'd by the Soveraign Power yet it cannot be imagined that the Majority here too shall carry it for an abolishing that very power that called them unless we can imagin the Supream Power had summoned them on purpose to be deposed and that this politick BODY was Assembled as once they were too sadly in the natural Sence to cut off its own HEAD the Writ that summons them in our Parliament is in order to deliberate about the difficult Affairs of the Kingdom and it would be a difficult Business indeed should it be by a casting voice extended to a debate whither they had a King And from these Reasonings and Suggestions which I submit to Men of more Sense and Reason I dare to draw this Conclusion that even from their own Principles Their Contract with their King or as Sidney says The Condition upon which he receives the Crown he can not possibly be punish'd or depos'd because 't is almost impossible that every one of his Subjects should concur in such an Act and the Major part must by no means determine it by their own Maxims of Natural Liberty even in affairs of lesser Moment 2. Because 't is no Consequence that because they have confer'd the Supremacy upon some single Person that therefore they may reassume it too tho it were forfeitable even on Condition which l 've shown the Romans themselves never pretended to tho their own Democraticks tell us their very Lex Regia was Conditional and their Laws which by all Nations are allowed the most equal resolve it that tho with them bare promises if made to private Persons were were not Obligatory yet when offer'd to the publick they oblige and that in a Monarchy is always the King and what then must it be when there 's Oath made Faith pawn'd and fealty sworn And those Laws resolve it too as reason must that when the Supream Power was confer'd on the Prince all Magistracy was past over too and in that lies all Judicial Power and who then shall Judge of those Conditions that forfeit a Crown but him that wares it and thenthey'll be but little the better for the Controversie when a King cannot be deposed unless like a Richard the Second by his own consent I have taken this Course as the best way for the Confutation of such Principles not that I can really grant them the Concessions I have made for I could assoon believe Mr. S. dy'd a Loyal Subject as be satisfy'd with the positions he has lain down but I therefore grant them their own Hypothesis that they may confute themselves that they may see their own Babel of Anarchy will not be built upon the very Basis and Foundation of those Foolish positions they maintain that the work never was or will be carried on far without terminating as that of their Fore-fathers in Confusion and by that they mean perhaps a Common-wealth and have I hope in some Measure manifested that even by their own wicked assertion of the Peoples Divine Natural and Original power they cannot really pretend toany Right of Judging Punishing or deposing their King what force can do we have both felt and fearfully to our Terror seen but in all Arguments of this Nature the Question is of the Reason and Right and not of any Fact that may be justify'd by wrong and the refuting them from their own Maxims must be more effectually convincing then the maintaining of ours for one opinion in Politicks is