follow every Civil Judgment much less the Vncivil Judgment of any Sett of Conspirators and Traitors into whose hand you so liberally and piously dispose it T. B's 2d Lett. p. 19. Eucher I am resolved that no calumnious usage shall storm or transport me into any indecent or uncharitable passion But tho' for my own part I might reject your imputations of disloyalty with scorn and silence yet for your conviction I will calmly remind you that I ever told you that the Estates of this Land are not Judges of the Kings Person who is not under their Power nor in Law subject to them And all that I any where said of their Judgment about the Throne amounts to no more than this that in a state of Anarchy on a King's Desertion or in Arbitration between two or more Competitors the Estates of this Land are the Supream Domestick Judges and Arbiters upon the Tenure of the Sovereignty and the Rights of the Nation in order to Settlement And that in case an irresistible or unresisted Potentate * Sol. Ab. p. 5. enforce himself upon the Nation for a new King and the Subject people cannot help it our Laws in this concur with the Laws and Practice of all Nations in allowing our Estates to determine for us in such Exigencies * Ibid. p. 4. that in extra-ordinary interruptions and convulsions of State our Laws and Constitutions allow the Estates such a King as can actually be had for the time being for which * Ibid. p. 5. I refer to our Histories Acts of Parliament and Judgments of Law under hereditary Kings since the Reformation without any Remonstrance of King Church or State to the contrary and at last to Bishop Overals Convocation Book So that if a Question arise in the disordered Kingdom who is my King to whom my Allegiance is legally payable I refer to their Judgment as the then Supream in all our Civils and if you can assign any Superior or more Legal Judgment to decide and determine such national Questions and Controversies I am content to give up fairly to you And if you can produce any Homilies Articles Canons or Monuments of this Church contrary to these my Positions then I will yield that the Churches Authority as far as that can go upon Civil Questions will lie against me But a mans Eyes shall sooner drop out of his Head than discover any such counter-principles in the publick constitutions of our Church which you would have quoted if you could particularly but since that could not be done 't was very feeble to make such an hollow and causeless noise about it And yet if the Church in Civils had interpreted the Laws contrary to the Judgments of the State she had given a null and incompetent Judgment since we are no Authentick Doctors in these matters nor the Church a Court of Civil Judicature prohibitions always justly lying on her whensoever she admits the Pleas and assumes the Judgment of Civil Causes As to the Rebellion against King Charles the First it comes not near our Case for there was a King actually Regnant who in Parliament had redressed all their Grievances and whose Tenure was indisputable and undisputed the very Rebels owning their Arms to be for King and Parliament But neither was that Rebellion a judicial form of proceeding of both Houses of which only I spake as Authentick in the Actual Vacancy of the Throne and a state of Anarchy but a military one by a divided part of the Houses assuming the Style and Title of the whole Parliament against a King actually Regnant which I had no occasion to mention much less to justifie the Nation having since condemned it by Act of Parliament Nor had it been entred into by the unanimous Vote of both Houses had it obliged as a Law as wanting the Royal Assent of the King then Regnant And the Rights of the Crown and Duties of our Allegiance are still the same tho' Milton will still have Successors to his Villanies arise when their Sovereigns are involved to tamper with popular and seditious humours and ambitions in order to new projected commotions But they who make the Convention to have proceeded on principles of Rebellion contrary to their enacted Judgments that hence they may draw Arguments to whiten the Old and to enflame New Rebellions deserve they and their incendiary Pamphlets to be burnt together Nor need you fear any such consequence from any my Positions as if upon these the Parliaments may change their Kings every Day and thereupon our Oaths For I have asserted no Convention of Estates to be in Name or Thing a Parliament if they mect contrary to the Fundamental Laws of their Constitution And while a King is actually Regnant they * The Triennial Act was not pasied when this was written yet meet sit are prorogued and dissolved at the Kings Order only And this being yet the form of our State no Votes or Bills of the Houses can pass into an Act or Law without the Assent of the King Regnant at whose pleasure they immediately are and are not and so can make no Legal Assembly or publick Change without or against him over whose Person they are neither Lords nor Judges For tho' Causes of the King may come before the Lords and be overruled in Justice to the Subjects Right against which they are brought thither yet this is no more than what we see in other Courts which yet pretend no Sovereignty over the Kings Person by whose Commission they sit in Judgment So far am I from such wicked Principles as Plat-thorns in the Crowns of Kings and set them in the most unsupportable Bondage that Art or Ill-nature can contrive but withal provoke great spirited and designing Princes to seek avenues to an Arbitrary Power who would have gladly been contented with a regular and equal Sovereignty if they could have been secured in it from the fears and incentives of popular insolence But to return from this Digression if a King thro' any fear or cause whatsoever utterly deserts his Kingdoms and leaves all in Anarchy and Confusion that the Estates of the Land if they can should then Convene and settle the Nation the best way they can is so far from Rebellion that it is most certainly both their Priviledge and their Duty And if they are first to determin our Settlement I am sure the Churches Loyalty is to follow their Judgment except we challenge an Appeal from them to the Church to ratifie or vacate our Civil Constitutions And if you call this Duty of Submission to their Civil Settlements implicit Faith in the Parliament it will be prone to retort that you challenge an implicit Faith in the Church and that in matters not Ecclesiastical in a latitude more Exorbitant than any Pretensions of the Church of Rome But the Truth is our Duty to any such established Settlements is not founded in an implicit Faith whose proper Objects are things not seen
Subjects of any Sovereign Prince may combine with and invite in a foreign Prince and when he comes tho' with a contemptible force they may forsake their lawful Prince and then by their Treachery having left him helpless and hopeless may treat with a Foreigner drive away their own King give his Crown to the Foreigner and maintain it with their Swords and Purses without which he could not keep his illgotten Goods T. B's 2d Lett. p. 18. Eucher It confessedly seems as I stated the Proposition you cannot deny the perspicuity of its Truth and therefore you invert it to an invidious Paraphrase which in many parts of it is not truly applicable to that which was the Subject of my Apology viz. the Authority of the Convention For all your aggravated Invitations Combinations Revolts Treacheries and Derelictions allowing or supposing them to be no other than you describe them are not chargeable on the whole Estates of the Land especially when in Convention And even thus I will renew my Position That by the Laws of Nations if a foreign Prince procure the Revolt of a vast part of another Princes Subjects thro' the terror of which the helpless Prince leaves his Kingdoms in Anarchy under the Army of the foreign Potentate who thereupon calls the Estates of such deserted Nation to treat for a Settlement they may convene and treat with him upon such invitation For it is the necessity the subject Nation stands in for a Settlement that warrants and legitimates such Treaties by what means soever those exigencies are introduced whether by foreign Force or intestine Commotions jointly or severally throwing all into Anarchy and Disorder But if the charge of the Revolt preclude the legality of any mans Session that incapacity ought to have been objected and if over-ruled protested against in Convention as I have already told you which not being done they were all in Law Reason and Civil Construction lawful Agents and Councellors As to the word Unresisted Power I confess I used care indeed but no trick for it was too hard for me to judge whether the Prince's Power were irresistible or no and so it is in many cases in which Parties yield rather than run the hazard of a Battle But every one can tell when it is or is not actually resisted and the Proposition is as true of an unresisted as well as irresistible Power Tho' take you all the Forces foreign and domestick joyned to the Prince when the Convention was called you will think it hard for any Subjects to have resisted them when the King himself long before durst not but disbanded and quitted thereby all pretensible Duties in the Subjects to take Arms. And the Conventioners deserve to be your humble Servants for putting them upon such an Essay But if you will require where the fault of this non-resistance really lies I think you may find it in him that neither could be induced to call a Parliament nor to fight it out After which double miscarriage and flight out of the Kingdom I think no man was obliged to resist or take up Arms but to desire such a Settlement as the State of Affairs would admit As for the Wars we maintain with our Purses against all the Enemies of our present Settlement they are just according to all the Rules and Forms of Civil Laws to which you your selves contribute as well as we only with more Crime as doing that against your Consciences which we admit upon Principles to us appearing good But if you think your Exigencies legitimate your payment of Taxes to prevent new danger so we think the general Exigencies of the Nation did legitimate this Settlement and do still justifie our plenary Submission thereunto according to the Sense Laws and Usages of all Nations As for those you call Revolters they were not the Subject of my Discourse whom I therefore leave to God who as he saw the provocations so did he also every mans purposes and trains of thought in that Insurrection according to which at the last day they shall each man be judged But for those that lay still I know no legal summons they had from King James to rise in Arms to make that quietness a breach of Allegiance in which certainly you Jacobites are as culpable as the others and in one degree more in that when you might and upon your Principles ought to have taken Arms for him you would not and now when you neither can nor ought clamour for new Seditions and Commotions by which we must inevitably fall a prey to France and a Burnt-Sacrifice to Rome Dyscher I will now for the present intermit the Remarks I collected at Gilman's Coffee-House and bestow some other impartial Reflexions on your Grand State-Principle on which you raise your other Arguments Here then I must tell you That you set up new Principles which the Church of England hath always declared to be erroncous and grounds of Rebellion viz. you set up the Parliament above the King and that we must take our measures of obedience only from the Parliament * Sol. Ab. p. 31. to whose Judgment say you in all Civils all Subjects must submit And upon this you Ground all your Superstructure as that King James's * Ibid. p. 8. Tenure has been publickly judged by this Natition to be extinct * p. 9. and that this Nation hath justified King William 's Cause which is to conclude upon us Beyond this you allow no no man to look or enquire The whole Body of the Church are to be taught by the Parliament and to have an implicit faith in them against the King in all Cases whatsoever so that * Ibid. p. 4. the Churches Loyalty is to follow the Civil Judgment concerning the Object of our Allegiance and the Tenure of Sovereignty And by this Rule if a Parliament change a King every day the Church is bound to swear to every one the Parliament can solve their Oaths But there was a time when the Church thought it their Duty to be Teachers and particularly as to Loyalty as being a principal part of Religion and even against a Parliament Here unfortunately four or five lines were broken off the MS. Reflections but as I well remember the sense was such as is included within these brackers and their Doctrine was owned by all true Sons of the Church of England I mean the Old Church of England in the Reign of King Charles II. This was their Doctrine and Practice and generally of the whole Church of England ever since the Reformation as is plain in her Homilies Articles and Canons c. And you do not attempt to disprove these but only assert the contrary and so leave it as a thing settled and sure MS. Reflections That the Churches Loyalty as to the Object is to be guided by the true Constitution of the State I deny not but I shall never yield what you would thence slur upon us that it is to
the Quarrel of which mens private Opinions are most times very contrary but can hardly ever be sure or unanimous And by this Rule all Nations go and there is no better tho' God forbid that any man should be obliged to think all the Spoils of War and Law to be really honest and morally rightful Now according to these Rules and Distinctions I asserted that Extra-lineal Kings may be Lawful Successors in Cases Extra-ordinary and I will add upon Causes really Just Rightful Successors too And lest you should quarrel at this Distinction as of private Invention but no publick Character I refer you to the late Oath of Allegiance in the first Paragraph where our late Sovereign Lord K. J. is declared Lawful and Rightful King of this Realm c. that he might be taken for not only de facto but de jure King But amidst all this Dust of what use is a General Question or Position except it properly affects our particular Cases So that in order to the Censure you design upon King William you ought to have charged all the Facts in your stated Question directly upon him in the Course of the Revolution with exact congruity and accuracy that you might have evinced his Illegality or Incapacity of Right in the Possession of this Crown But this you perhaps fancy every body can do But I will in truth try whether it can be done or no. I allow you then in the foundation that the Prince of Orange at his Descent as he had no Right so he pretended none to this Crown and declared his Intentions not to injure King James in any his Personal or Royal Rights whatsoever but then I deny that the Prince seized the Crown by ill Arts or any breach of publick Protestations For when he came in the Head of an armed Force he declared that he came not for the Crown but a Decision of his Cause in Parliament to which end he sent the King fair Articles of Truce and Treaty during the Session But the King refuses or neglects the Proposals and leaves the Kingdom in Anarchy Now all such Declarations in War have this natural obvious and perpetual intention that if the matters in Controversie be adjusted as demanded the Prince demandant will be fully satisfied as having no design to seize his Adversaries Dominions if he will right the Causes of Hostility in the manner claimed but otherwise the very form and Face of War and Arms is in Fact an open Declaration to vanquish out dethrone and crush the Adversary by all Martial and Hostile Methods whatsoever So that King James nglecting his Demands in not calling a Parliament to satisfie the Prince cannot complain that he has broken his Faith or Declaration in taking his Crown And further when the King was gone there appeared no Force or Fraud in the Prince's Actions with the Convention to whose Judgment he fairly left the whole Cause and State of Affairs and they having maturely and peaceably debated all things judge King James's Desertion with respect to all antecedent passages to be an Abdication of the Government and withal they judge the Prince's Succours to have merited the Crown which with the amicable Concession of the two next Heirs they cheerfully offer up to him which he then accepted when a fair Capacity and title was thus legally opened to him So that tho' at first he had no form of Title Pretentions or Designs for this Crown during King James his Right yet when this determined and no other Legal Obstacles interposed there was a fair Reason to accept that then which it was not lawful in Conscience for him before to covet or design Dyscher Your instance in the Houses of York and Lancaster comes not up to so plain a Case as this Where things are obscure and dark as that Title was and perhaps still is to most men great allowance is to be made Lancaster had the more obvious York the better Title * Here T. B. very charitably makes the excellent Bishop of Worcâ—ster to deserve a Gallows instead of a Bishoprick p. 22. But what means this preaching up Confusion The Nation then weltered in Blood and Gore till an undoubted Title put an End to that quarrel But you would have us obstinately maintain a bad Title that our Miseries might have no End A rare Example of Justice and Love to your Country T. B's 2d Lett. p. 21 22. Eucher It seems then it was lawful for the Nation to admit the House of Lancaster against the better Title in the House of York or else what allowances do you make upon the Obscurities of the Title But does it follow that the House of Lancaster had a real Right If so then an extra-lineal King may be Rightful If not then Allegiance may be lawfully yielded by the Nation to extra-lineals who are in by legal Forms of Settlement and Recognition tho not really Rightful or Lineal Heirs For so upon your great allowances the House of Lancaster when enthroned was visibly Legal tho not lineally Rightful and does not this then come full up to all the purpose I designed For it was not meer obscurity of the Descent tho' much involved before the common World by contrary Pretensions that warranted the People in these Submissions but the necessity of ending Spoils Rapines and effusions of Blood For if the competitor Houses would have acquiesced in the judgment of the Estates they could well have determined for the better title upon a fair Heraldry or production of Descents But the Families as opportunities offered themselves were generally restless under the Superiour House but those stirs were legally ended toties quoties by Parliamentary Recognitions But the final end was not procured by the clearness of an undoubted Title but by the Marriage of the Lancastrian King Henry VII with the Lineal Heiress of the House of York by which all competitions closed but Henry stood upon his own bottom in the National Recognition through all his Reign and neither yielded subjection to nor derived his Title from his Queen But yet let us see in dubitable cases how great your allowances would be and particularly in the Lancastrian Reigns Supposing then the Title between the two Houses dubitable or doubted only with one part of the Nation but certain to the rest shall both these Parts swear one Allegiance to the Title which is doubted by one Part against that Title which the other Part is certain of If so then you allow one Part of the Nation to swear against a Title which they know to be certainly Right Or must the doubting Part concede to the Title which others know to be Right If so then the Lancastrian Line cannot be admitted or capable of any your allowances Or must there in this Case be two Kings for the two Parties and two Allegiances in this one Realm Or what if the Competitors and Doubts multiply where shall these and their Divisions end But suppose the whole Nation to
communicate with us in all that is Lawful Now it is actual Communion in all publick Offices and Worship which you require from us and the reason you give why we should pay it is in the words before cited the sence of which must be that your Church is ready with a Remonstrance to afford the same Communion to the Church of Rome that is Actual Communion in Publick Worship So with an insignificant Remonstrance you can go to Mass and are willing to do it See this and a great deal more such stuff in T. B's 2d Lett. p. 12 13. Eucher This is indeed a notable fetch that I should excite you to rejoyce with us for Redemption from Popery and yet profess a readiness and desire to communicate in it and in that very communion to remonstrate against it This no doubt would be a very pleasant way of accordance with the Roman Forms and yet at last when I invited you to Communicate with us in all that is Lawful I meant only what you think Lawful what is by us both confessed Lawful not to what we only think Lawful against your opinion and to this end * Sol. Ab. p. 3. that you might the better heal what you think we do amiss and so much agreement I confess we owe to all that is good in the Church of Rome and by us acknowledged for such as well by them But that I invited you not to any actual Communion in any thing you judge Unlawful while you judge it so appears in that I required not your presence to * Ibid. page 15. that Prayer of New Allegiance on the 29th of May while you are under the perswasions of its Impiety But in truth having as I thought proved us not to be actually Unchurched I willed that you should yield us so much Communion as may signifie your acknowledgement that we are yet of the Church of Christ viz. in all those Offices which you can Judge Good and Lawful in order to an easier accommodation for so I presume of this Church and of you too that you would not refuse any good Ecclesiastical Negotiations which import some though not a plenary Communion with the Church of Rome in order to a Restitution of the Churches of Christendom to a Primitive Frame were the Church of Rome disposeable thereto And they that will deny this to any corrupt Churches I think are not real Christians nor so much as externally qualified Members of the Church Catholick and to this innocent purpose and consequence only were my words so exactly ordered with a design to stave off all Catches herein that nothing but an inexcusably wretched spite and bitterness could have hewn out of them so perverse and undesigned a construction Dyscher I am not satisfied that you will allow our Deprivation to be a Persecution only on supposition that it be for adherence to the Doctrines of the Church or the Laws of God What if neither the Laws of God nor the Church had been concerned and they had had only occasion to stand to the Laws and Constitutions of the Land which forbid force against and Deposition of Kings and exclusion of the Heir I think this had been no ill Cause c. T. B's 2d Lett. Eucher I did not mention the Laws of the Land because till they are Authentically Vacated the Laws of God and the Doctrines of our Church do assert their obligation on our obedience so far as it is in our power to perform it and a voluntary violation of the Laws and Constitutions of Civil Government is a violation of the Laws of God which the Church Preaches in her Doctrine Therefore I allow you that adherence to the permanent obligation of the standing laws of the Land is a good Cause for the maintenance whereof all Sufferings are Persecutions and all the voluntary Agents in them Persecutors But if the reason or obligation of any Law ceaseth or if you mis-understand Laws and will oppose your private Judgment on them against the received and constant Judgment and Practice of the Nation on our Laws then your Sufferings upon such Prejudices cannot come under that black Character which is a thing enquireable between you and me Dyscher Then I take it for a very odd demand that we must give in a very clear proof that we are Ejected for adhereing to the Laws of God I pray who are they that ought to bring this clear proof I have heard some say that it is an Axiom in Law that they who expect the benefit ought to make the Proof Now you get all into your hands and would you give no Reason for it And yet it would be but to little purpose to prove to a Thief that he has stolen my Goods T. B's 2d Lett. p. 14. Eucher But do you not consider that in Law and Reason whoever accuses any man before a Judge ought to prove his Bill if the Accused plead Not Guilty And you by complaining to the World of the wrong done to K. James and the Deprived Appeal not to them whom you account Thieves but to all others to avoid their Communion Now to draw off all People from their Communion it is necessary to prove their actions Illegal according to the Laws of Tenure in the Crown and the Ecclesiastical Promotions since they whom you implead challenge those Laws for their Justification And further by your leave he that is out of Possession but lays a claim of Right and expects the benefit of it ought to prove his Claim and the Possession of the Adversary injurious For they that are in peaceable or legal form of Possession have no need to make nor consequently to prove a Claim if not disproved Beside your Case is not concerned meerly in your own personal Right but in the Consciences and Salvation of other mens Souls even of those whom you call Thieves and therefore you are obliged to convince them of the unlawfulness of such Changes which they think lawful and not only so but in the present circumstances necessary Dyscher But I will further examin your own Proposals and Concessions herein * Sol. Ab. p. 4. An untainted Loyalty you approve while the Obligation lasts and we desire no more But then you think the Obligation may cease not only by Death or Resignation but also by Cession Nor do I think it worth while to dispute this with you provided it be real not forced not falsly imputed For so any man that is driven out of his House or takes a Journey from Home may be interpreted to have quitted his Estate by Cession But when Cession is real it can only affect the Party who makes it and ought to be no injury to the next Heir But has that person made a Cession who tho' to preserve his Life he fly from fraud and irresistible force yet all the while claims his right calls on all persons to do him justice and useth all honest means that may be to
uncertain Rochester Letter make the Abdication manifestly false since he says it makes the Disertion so Here I doubt his Courage will fail him lest his Argument and his Dedication follow the fate of the Pastoral Letter And yet it is manifest that though K. James made many large and previous steps to the Subverting our Constitution yet the Final Abdication of the whole Government consisted in his Desertion from whence the Vacancy Commenced and if this were no otherwise manifest we have Mr. Johnson's own Averment who tells us * ibid page 29. That we have an Act of Parliament which declares the Realm of England to have been Sovereign during that time of Vacancy between K. James's second flight and K. William's Admission by ordering all Indictments from the time of K. James ' s withdrawing till the 13th of February to run in their Name 'T is true indeed that meer Local Desertion of the Land of which there may be many Causes does not ipso facto extinguish the Sovereignty except it be judicially interpretable to an Abdication from other concurrent Circumstances and Indications on want of which a demand of Return becomes reasonable and the neglect thereof interprets the Recession to an Abdication but when there are evident tokens of yielding up a Government in the form manner causes and circumstances of such Local Desertion then a summons of Return is not necessary in point of Law or National Duty upon the antecedent forms of Virtual Abdication apparent in such Departure If therefore his Act of Disertion in its own form made a Legal and Effectual Abdication his Rochester Letter imports no more than that his words and actions are contradictory in quitting by deed and claiming by word the same Right at the same time Upon this Abdication therefore the Throne becoming actually Vacant was by the Act of the Nation filled up with their Majesties And here upon whatsoever powers K. James endeavours to Exert as they do not reach us nor send out their vertue by legal ways of course so are they too late and out of season not to mention that his late ways of Exertion under French Conduct how honest soever you may call them look not very natural or smiling upon English Men If we sum up the matter he was ruining all the Laws and Liberties with the Religion of the Lands he Ruled and they were just on the Precipice under his Exertions so that the Nation needed and gasped for relief under them Upon this the Prince of Orange having Great Interests and Legal Expectations here comes over with a declared Intention to set all things at Right in such order as the English Parliament should adjust which was a fair and most equal design this then was the time for K. James to have Exerted his Royal Power Justice too in calling a Parliament for such purposes according to the sense of the whole Nation earnestly recommended to him by his Prelates Nobles and Counsellors for a long time by sundry Addresses even to the last and he having sent out some writs thereunto seemed a while enclined but upon Romish Advice recalls that purpose and instead of doing us that Justice was resolved to contest it with the Sword Hereupon his Army which had he called a Parliament to have healed the Nation would have secured him against all Forreign and Domestick Violence sunk their Affections as having no maw to Fight for him against their Native Country Liberties and Religion disperse by degrees and great part go over to that which they knew to be the Juster Cause and he being thus daily weakned retires disbands the rest and even not then calling a Parliament to help himself and us out of the Confusion he flies away to the Grand Enemy and Terrour of this Nation and leaves us to shift for our selves under those Aspects and apprehensions of dangers that lay before us If then he would not exert a Legal Power when he might 't is too late to offer at any Forreign ways of Exertion after a New Settlement or 't is at least unreasonable to demand our Reception of them to the destroying of our Redeemer after a National Allegiance given him for his sake who ever pursued our general Ruine against the Laws his Oath the ties of Natural Affection and the Sighs Groans and Requests of his Loyal People And whereas you say we may have his Power and Presence too if we will as lovely as that may be fancied 't is more than you can warrant For if we were disposed to accept your offers if he should come with a French force are you secured that the French would permit him to be as free and independent a Monarch as before 'T is possible they might erect him for a Vassal titularly Royal till their strength were fixed and then upon demand of Expences or other pretexts pick a quarrel with him to annihilate him for their Masters Glory Or supposing the French King for once a true Friend to King James would not his Forces make King James an Arbitrary Monarch here to exert more than a legal Power over all the Bodies and Souls Estates Coffers and Purses of the Nation If we had had any maw for such Power we might easily have had it while he was here and not have been beholden to the French for the Commodity But if King James should concert privately with us to return without any French measures or services can you assure us to keep this secret from the French King Or if you fail in point of secrecy are you sure he will let King James go or treat with us in neglect of his Interests and Pleasure Or would he not rather Bastile him for Ingratitude and treat him hereupon after his usual methods of humanity Thus pretty are your Projects to expose the Fate and Fortunes of Nations upon and discover such a distemper in the Brain as requires the Law of Bedlam rather than any other consideration Dyscher When we deny the Authority by which your Estates sate you ask us by what Authority was that Free Parliament called or sate that voted in King Charles the Second Sir if you please let another be called and vote in King James the Second When things are out of Order and good men set them to Rights again I do not think any man will oppose it upon the score of some small niceties but when subjects rebel against their Prince and drive him away and make that the ground of their going on and doing farther wickedness I cannot understand the Authority of this There is certainly in every man an innate natural Power and Authority to wish well to and vote for Right By virtue of this when things were in confusion the Subjects of King Charles the Second returning to their Wits and Allegiance send a convenient number to act for the whole who recall their rightful King and if you should do so likewise I should not be very quarrelsom with you But whatever
Heb. 11.1 but in an apparent explicit and authentick Determination as all other Duties pursuant to Laws and Publick Judgments are and no otherwise And you that will allow the Churches Loyalty as to the Object to be guided by the true Constitution of the State but not by every Civil Judgment have need to explain your self what shall he the Supream Civil Judgment for you concerning the Laws and Constitutions of our State in rare unusual and dangerous Cases of Desertion and Anarchy For if you assert to every man a practical Judgment upon our Laws and Rights in such Cases and that even against a National Judgment the Confusions must be eternal If there must be a Civil Council I pray assign me any other like that of the Estates in Convention who indeed as often as such Cases call upon them are the Supream Judges of the Constitutions and Rights of the Nation and Arbiters of our Settlement concluded thereupon And if you will not yield to every such Civil Judgment you may as well say you will yield to none excepe it comports with your private Humours or Persuasions which is the true and plain English of your Answer herein if I may use the freedom you take with me of being your Paraphrast or Interpreter and is a wonderful Expedient to settle us by eternal and unreconcilable discords in Opinion and Practice Dyscher Let us now see what a fine account you give us of the Laws and Rules of our Succession and hereon you tell us * Sol. Ab. p. 4. That the general and ordinary Rule of Succession to this Crown is Hereditary but in extraordinary Interruptions and Convulsions of State against the ordinary Course our Laws and Constitutions do allow the Estates such a King as can be actually had for the time being till the ordinary Rule can be fairly recovered Now if a man were to speak this in plain English it would be thus By our Laws and Constitutions the Crown is Hereditary but if any Vsurper or Traytor will not suffer it to be so but puts by the Right Heir and gets possession himself the Laws and Constitutions allow him to be King yes marry and a Lawful King too i. e. the Crown goes in a Lineal Succession while people are peaceable and Obedient but if they be troublesome and rebellious it is catch as catch can and he had Right and Law on his side who gets Possession and so will another and another without end who can successively wrest the Possession from those who had the Right whilst they could keep Possession Did ever any Body hear of such a Constitution as this Or was any thing better fitted to produce eternal Confusions Certainly you have a mind to persuade us that our Constitutions were made by the Wise Men of Goatham or the Wiser Men of Bedlam T. B's 2d Lett. p. 19. Eucher You frequently use a suspicious Artifice of travesteering what cannot be plainly answered into farce and mishapen figures and then expose it in Ridicule By which however you call upon you the Sentence of the Psalmist What shall be done unto thee thou false Tongue Mighty and sharp Arrows with hot burning Coals For if I may be my own Paraphrast my Sense is that all Estates and Subjects are to their utmost obliged to preserve together the Sovereign and the Sovereignty and the established forms of Government according to the precise constitution of the Laws but if these be irresistibly overborn or the Sovereign abdicates all to Anarchy then it is Lawful for the Estates to settle under such Sovereigns as can be actually had for the time being till the old Rules can be fairly recovered which being positive must give place to a temporal necessity But did I ever say that Tyrants or Traytors getting into Possession by meer Force had Right and Law on their side No sure for they may break all Law Right and antecedent Rules of Obligation and yet the oppressed Estates may lawfully admit the Oppressive Power when it appears too formidable under prospects of further inevitable Ruins This I expresly and cautiously told you in these words * Sol. Ab. p. 5. And even an unjust Potentate tho' he cannot according to Legal Justice out a King against whom he hath no Legal Cause or right of War yet if he doth do so and the subject People cannot help it and he enforce himself on the People for a new King our Laws in this concur with the Laws and Practice of all Nations in allowing our Estates to determine for us in such Exigencies and the sin shall lie only on the injurious and not on them that submitted to an inevitable fate of things and again * Ibid. p. 6. Wars and victories are many times unjust yet they that suffer the wrong lawfully submit to the unlawful and injurious demand of Submission as in Piracies and other like Tyrannies And could such a Confessor for Conscience Truth and Piety put lying Senses on my words without any remorses or touches of Conscience More integrity was due and becoming such starched or sacred pretensions But I have well learned that Faction leavens the Soul not only with sowerness but with insincerity also But as I truly stated and have now explained the Nature and Duties of our Constitution I assert it a Fundamental Law to all Civil Societies except perhaps that pair of dissyllable Seigniories which you mention where the Politcks Logicks and Ethicks suit with your and where unless you 'll to the Antyceryae I must leave you And since all Kingdoms and Empires are by the just and adorable Counsels of Gods Providence subject to such various Turns of Fate all Princes that take Crowns upon them take them with the Laws of their fortune and a concession to the regular consequences of such Change under which they acquit the innocent Subjects under new submissions tho' they condemn and being reduced prosecuted all those that enforced the Change But as long as the Duties of Subjection are such as I have described intestine changes and disorders cannot arise from them And while Princes minister Justice and Judgment to their People and make their Prosperity the Royal Care they are seldom threatned with Commotions But yet it sometimes happens that for unsearchable tho' Just Reasons the Judgment of God permits the most innocent Princes to intestine as well as foreign troubles which yet however they that promote shall not escape Divine Vengeance And yet after the determination of such Wars it can be no sin to acquiesce under those forms of Settlement which our Estates can procure for the time being tho' different from the ordinary Course And there is no other Rule to recover the Civil Felicity of Nations but by these Principles which every Princely Spirit must be presumed to allow in equity and compassion to all his good Subjects to rescue them from utter extirpation or perpetual misery Dyscher At last you are willing to qualifie the matter and
have said for while there is one in being and claiming to whom the Right really belongs what can your extra-ordinary Successors be but Tyrants and Vsurpers T. B's 2d Lett. p. 20 21. Eucher This I confess is an amazing Circumvention if my Memory hath in truth beguiled me And 't is a challenge enough to shock a greater confidence than mine To prove this therefore we must recur to the Form Enacted by the Statute Anno Tertio Jacobi Regis c. Also I do swear from my heart that notwithstanding any Sentence of Excommunication or Deprivation made or granted or to be made or granted by the Pope or his Successors or by any Authority derived or pretended to be derived from him or his See against the said King his Heirs or Successors or any absolution of the said Subjects from their obedience I will bear Faith and true Allegiance to his Majesty his Heirs and Successors and him and them will defend to the utmost of my Power against all attempts whatsoever that shall be made against his or their Persons their Crown and Dignity by Reason and Colour of any such Sentence or Declaration or otherwise and will do my best endeavour to disclose and make known unto his Majesty his Heirs and Successors all Treasons and Traiterous Conspiracies which I shall know or hear of to be against him or any of them These are all the times the words Heirs and Successors are mentioned in the Oath and in these here is no Character of Lawful set at all So that here you fall under the same fault you charge upon me of not reading the Oath and another added in a bold interpolation thereof at all adventure or if you have read it 't is the greatest of all prevarications consciously to misrender it but whether it were the one or the other it is the most frontless and unparallel'd impudence to down-face an obvious Truth with notorious Falshood And yet have a little patience to see what you had gained by this remark if it had been true You had said * Sol. Ab. p. 3. That the Oath of Allegiance binds to the King his Heirs and Lawful Successors and I taking it for granted that you interjected the word lawful not as a part but an interpretation of the Oath denied it not but without any cavil candidly admitted it but because I formed an Inference from that Oath that you like not you interpolate the Text of the Oath by foisting in the word lawful that hence you might draw a pretence that Lawful Successors limitedly denote the Lineal Heirs But neither would this have held For had the word lawful been found in the Oath my Argument had still been good * Sol. Ab. p. 5. That in the late Oath of Allegiance after the words Heirs the words Lawful Successors were added on this very self same ground that tho' Heirs by the ordinary Course are the Legal Successors yet others legally may succeed in Cases extraordinary Nay this legality of such extra-lineals had been more fully acknowledged had the word Lawful been inserted than now it is For now if a man would be perverse and were there no other Reason upon other Bottoms he might argue that this Oath simply setting all Successors without any express Qualification of Lawful to exclude unlawful requires Allegiance to all Actual Successors indiscriminately without any reserved respect to any legality or illegality But whether we suppose the Quality of Lawful as intended by the Sense or no the addition of Successors after Heirs denotes that their may be Successors to whom our Allegiance is by Oath secured that are not Heirs in the strict sense of Lineal Descent or else after Heirs no word of that Importance ought to have been added But as I was at first candid in the Concession of the Legality so will I here give you the reason of that Candor Having then observed that all Duties respect Laws and that what is not Legal can have no Legal Obligation and withal that the Oath obliges to the Successors of the very same Legal Sovereignty established here it appeared to me that he that comes into any other form of Sovereignty over us hath no right to our Allegiance by virtue of that Oath or the old standing Laws whatsoever Title thereto he may acquire by virtue of New Laws and Constitutions But if he assumes a Sovereignty that is in no wise Legal 't is Tyranny in Form and Nature and while it is barely such the man is an Enemy and no Allegiance can be due to him Now the Legal Forms by which Extra lineal Kings are invested with the English Sovereignty stand in Admission and Recognition of our Estates when insuparable Exigencies or just Causes incapacitate the Heirs Lineal to reign over us or us to be reigned over by them of which Obstacles in a state of Anarchy the Estates are our Supreamest and Final Judges Dyscher But what have you to say to an Impartial Reflection which I shall here offer you from another hand viz. that you maintain * See Sol. Ab. p. 6. That by our Oath to King James we are bound to pay Allegiance to King William which seems so strange a Paradox that the defending of it must serve only to let the World see that there are no Words nor Oaths possible to be framed for which men may not find Distinctions and Salvo's to turn them which way they think fit even directly opposite to what they were at first intended MS. Reflect Eucher Truly Brother this looks rather like whining under an Argument than an Answer to it for men seldom make a moan under any Objection they can solve Yet is your Reflecters Complaint herein as little sincere as manly For I said not that our Oath to King James alone obliges our Allegiance to King William as you from him represent me but that * Sol. Ab. p. 4. to p. 6. putting all together that I had said my concluding Opinion was that our Old oath of Allegiance supposing it still in force to the King his Heirs and Successors binds us to pay Allegiance to King William and Queen Mary as the present actual recognized Successors to King James upon extinction though not of his Life yet of his Sovereignty And this you can never disprove except you either shew that in that Oath the word Successors so distinctly set after Heirs three times in the same Paragraph was purposely set to exclude all Extra-lineal Kings for the time being whereby all the Statutes and former ties of Allegiance actually owned under the past Extra-lineals will be repealed by this Enacted Oath and all Judgments ever since past accordingly vacated or else that King William and Queen Mary are not actual Successors to King James in this Sovereignty by the same or as legal forms of Constitutions as other Extra-lineals were before them by a National Admission and Recognition tho' somewhat more than Extralineal Forms may be challenged to
Queen Mary upon her Fathers Abdication Now when you or your Prompters perform either of these Exploits then use your invective Powers even unto hoarsness but till then 't will not be prudent at the same time to be censorious rude and insincere too But I will not discourage you from going on I pray proceed in your Charge Dyscher When you had asserted that Extra-lineal Successors may in extra-ordinary Cases be Legal * Sol. Ab. p. 5. I pressed you to shew how he can be Legal that thrusts out the Legal King or Legal Successor And you strained a point to make him so But let us see your fine Art of proving Right Wrong and Wrong Right Your Discourse of Kings thrusting out Kings is a direct thrusting out Right and encouraging and justifying Ambitious Persons in embroyling the World in perpetual Wars and Confusions But I shall not expose it as it deserves because it is nothing to the purpose of a plain known Right and no Right T. B's 2d Lett. p. 21. Eucher Sir I think my self obliged to scrape a Leg once or twice to you for your eminent tenderness in exposing my designs in inverting the Characters of Right and Wrong But I pray what fouler exposition had you behind the Veil than this that I thrust out Right and animate men to embroil the World in Blood and Ruins If your Razor be tender yet you have a pretty close Hand which yet I am willing to bear considering that your Cause is in ipsâ acie novaculae But if I may expound your word Expose in your true sense it will signifie Answer and then on my Conscience you were in the Right of it For to answer it as it deserves is either to confute or confess it but you are not ingenious enough to do one and less ingenuous than to do the other But perhaps it was an inconsiderable piece of Impiety Let us see then what was this Draconick Incendiary Mormo of mine Why this verily * Sol. Ab. p. 5. One King by a Legal War may thrust out him that till he was thrust out was Legal King of his own People For the first offending Prince loses not his Sovereignty to the offended meerly by the offence till actually thrust out by the offended This I think is the general Law of the Trumpet and allowed for valid among all Nations But if you doubt let us refer the point to the French King whom You cannot suspect of Unfaithfulness to You or Your Cause But if the War be altogether Legal upon Offences that will warrant all the process of it till the Offender leaves his Dominions in the hands of the injured Conqueror a Just Change may follow here without justifying Illegal Wars and Rapins of unprovoked and injurious Powers Which tho' it be a Truth most clearly innocent yet a calumny was necessary to keep up the Ball and use a Talent But let this be I pray Sir how shew you that this is nothing to our purpose Dyscher If you would make a fair answer here you ought to give a direct Answer to this Question If a Person having really no Right doth disclaim any Right to a thing and by publick Declarations doth profess that he makes no Pretentions to it nor hath any Design to disturb another in his Right I say if this Person shall by ill Arts seize it doth this notwithstanding all his Protestations and Declarations to the contrary even against all Right and Reason create him a Right whether he will or no c. T. B's 2d Lett. p. 21. Eucher Here I confess you have taken a secure way to enclose my Answer to your side And as you have set the Question in learned light I answer to your Hearts content that such a Person shall hereby have no Right either with or against his will And to all such Questions I had given you a round and comprehensive Answer before to the same purpose tho' it so often escapes your notice belike for its inconsiderableness Yet it being a right Answer you shall have it in both Ears whether you will or no. And it was such * Sol. Ab. p. 5. And even an unjust Potentate tho' he cannot according to Legal Justice out a King against whom he hath no Legal Cause or Right of War yet if he doth so and the subject People cannot help it and he enforce himself upon the People for a new King our Laws in this concur with the Laws and Practices of all Nations in allowing our Estates to determin for us in such Exigences as is manifest in the long Contentions and many Turns between the Houses of York and Lancaster and the sin shall lie only on the injurious and not them that submitted to an inevitable fate of things And again * Sol. Ab. p. 6. Wars and Victories are many times unjust yet they that suffer the injury lawfully submit to the unlawful and injurious demand of Submission So that taking Right for a Title founded in real Justice no man really can have Right in the sight of God by a meer unjust Act or Acquisition And yet tho' the preparations to acquire new Kingdoms or Dominions be unjust if that very constituent Act which transfers the Possession does at the same time infringe no mans present and permanent Right such possession becomes Rightful But all this is nothing to the purpose For our Question is only of who or what is formally legal not what is in real honesty morally Rightful For all Possession which a man obtains by legal forms of Process either in War or Peace is formally and apparently Legal to all Civil Purposes and Constitutions tho' the Cause obtaining be far from being really and morally right And a man by legal Judgment may de facto be put into possession of what another man hath a real Right to so that the possessor shall have the Legal Form of Title in what is really anothers Due And in all such Cases all Affairs belonging to such Estate follow the Legal Tenure of the Possessor who is therefore in Law taken as bonae fidei possessor And even antecedently to Judgement quiet possession in a private Estate tho' slipt into by cunning Frauds and Artifices against which there is no Civil Law is taken by the Law for formally Legal till the Occupant loses it either by Art or Judgment Now all independent Persons and Princes that are subject to no Judicial Tribunal contend by War not Law and what they settle themselves in by the forms consequent upon War they have such a formal Title to as the Laws of War and Revolutions yield them and no other tho' whether Cause is just and consequently thereupon whose Possession is honestly rightful none can effectually judge but God amidst so many pretensions And in such Turns the Subject People must or may lawfully yield to the formal Titles or Fates of War since they are not authoritative Judges on the Causes or Rights of
Deliverance having forgotten that Compassion which I deeply have for all Royal Tragedies would be apt to make a jest of this and reply upon you that they have been served well enough in the first place before the Prince and Princess of Orange who are well enough served too and all as they deserve But I shall only observe your inconsiderateness of discourse in bringing in King James into the Catalogue of his own Heirs after his Cession upon which I said the Succession was not violently broken but altered by the consent of the next Heirs And this I think I may still defend without breach of modesty even tho' I should allow the proceedings of the Convention to have been violations of his Right For a violent Expulsion of a Possessor may consist with the true Succession of the next Reversioners But admitting the Cession or Abdication for real what need was there to solicit his further consent to our Establishments And for your Prince of Wales beside the doubt of the Nation concerning his Descent the late Queen brought him into a Cession before the Cession and Abdication of the King nor were there any Claims entred for him before the Convention and so he might be legally neglected for want of Claimer I know this has been charged on the Prince and the Convention for not admitting the Discussion of that Descent But I think no Law could oblige them to move it ex officio when he was absent and no Promoter appeared on his behalf But further to enquire into the Equity hereof if King James at the Prince's demand had called a Parliament that had been one of the Principal Articles to have been judicially determined by the Parliament between them But King James not calling a Parliament nor allowing the Convention power of Judgment herein there was no reason such a Question should be admitted there which if determined against King James and his Prince of Wales should not have concluded them but if given against the Princess of Orange should have confined and excluded her As to your politick stroke upon the Princess of Denmark I shall reflect no more than this that if she will permit you to the Conduct of her Counsels she is like to thrive mightily by it For you will advise her either to present flight or sedition only to make way for I know not what or how many new Princes of another Venter whose real Descent no one should ever know but the Men of the Mysteries Perhaps your Agents have laid the Seeds of Discontent between the two Princely Ladies already in order to form your other Projects but I hope that God that has hitherto preserved them in their natural Rights against all the Arts of those who would have illegitimated or intercepted their Sucession will still preserve her Royal Highness from the Snares you lay for her And since you have blurted out the Secret to the Publick she and the whole Kingdom have reason to take close notice of it Dyscher When we object the immoralities of these proceedings you tell us * Sol. Ab. p. 6. That the internal immorality of all Actions must be carefully distinguished from the Civil Consequences of them A Son say you by fraudulent Arts gets judgment in Law and seizes his Fathers Estate and Body by Execution and starves his Father in Prison this mans immorality is damnable Yet the Judges Sheriffs and other Officers are innocent It may be so while they act as Officers of Law and according to the directions of Law But if your Judges Sheriffs or other Officers join with and assist such a wicked Son or Daughter to effect such an Evil Act or do applaud and approve it when they know it be done by such wicked and unlawful Acts then their being Officers of Law will rather increase than diminish their Guilt T. B's 2d Lett. p. 23. Eucher Now all this I allow too whether done judicially or in forms of Law or no. But if it be done in private and not in Legal Forms it is nothing to our purpose or my objection But if the Judges sit in Judgment between the Father and the Son and very wickedly cast the Father in his Cause yet it being done in form of Law the Judgment will pass into such Execution as will be taken for formally legal tho' the Judgment be morally unjust and contract an heinous Guilt on the Conscience of the Judge So that still the Subject People are innocent in admitting the Acts of the Convention as Legal tho' really before God they had been Unrighteous Judges Yet because you herein sharpen a Dart against the King and Queen tho' I never intended my Objection to such a Reflection the Case you set is not parallel to ours For the Convention sate not in Judgment between the Father and Son and Daughter the Father not being subject in Law nor submitting his Cause to them but when the Father had left his Royal Estate the Prince calls them together to settle the forsaken State of the Kingdom which they did as it now stands And as this Judgment was in Form Legal and Authoritative so you cannot prove it immoral or injurious For as the Estates were not concerned to enquire into the temper of Spirit in the Contest between the Father and the Children toward each other which was not of Civil Cognizance so they debated only the Civil Purposes of King James's Actions and how the state of this Land might be legally and securely fixed after his Desertion in which they acted as Legal Judges and no otherwise What was done before or out of Convention by any of the Members and the inner motions and aims of particular mens minds there sitting during these agitations these are extrajudicial and so not chargeable on the whole Court as a Council of State as being no parts of their formal Determinations Dyscher So for your Robbers and Pirates a man may lawfully suffer by them tho' it were better if he could escape it But if you will plead that their Robberies and Piracies are lawful if you say they acquire a just Right to what they get by such wicked means or if you actually joyn with them and rob and share in their Booties you will be as very a Rogue as they and which is most like the Case I leave others to judge T. B's 2d Lett. p. 24. Eucher This it seems is your reply to what I said * Sol. Ab. p. 6. That Wars and Victories are many times unjust yet they that suffer the injury lawfully submit to the unlawful and injurious demand of Submission as in Piracies and other like Tyrannies And is not this a pretty Refutation of that Assertion to say that all that assert assist and share in Wrong are Rogues The reason of my instance was that such Pirates and Tyrants often seize on such as they have no Right of Dominion over and may perhaps threaten to torture or destroy them except they submit and contract
penal sanction but positive local and judicial does not oblige us but the natural reason substrate thereto supposes and indicates all obligations of Duty from all Relations whatsoever forfeited by Atheism and avowed Irreligion And accordingly Asa dishonoured his Mother in devesting her of her Royal Dignity because she had made an Idol in a Grove 1 King 15.13 2 Chron. 15.16 Nor is this any breach of the Law of Nature but the observation of it for the Law of Nature being nothing else but pure Abstract Reason and Equity whatsoever is consonant to this Equity comports with the Laws of our Nature By these Laws the sins of Men-rescind their Rights in many benefits which had been due to them in a state of Innocency The Law of God requires us simply to honour all men it being the natural due of our beings framed after the Image of God and yet wicked and ungodly men are to be shunned as spots and blemishes by the Law of Nature and to be made Anathema by the Censure of the Church For the Foundation of all Authority whatsoever is God and all Obligations to all Duties Civil Moral and Religious are founded in him so that an avowed rejection of God puts men out of all claims of Authority which alone is originally Gods for a renunciation of God is an effectual renunciation of all just and real Authority whatsoever The Fifth Commandment therefore being not a meer positive Precept but a dictate of Natural Equity is interpretable to particular Acts according to the Rules of Equity and must concede to superiour and more important Obligations which will sometimes require us to hate Father and Mother that is to disregard their Commands and forsake their Persons to keep Gods Commandments Luke 14.26 If a Son be a King and the Father a Subject he must deal with his own Father as a Subject in Civil Causes nay as a Malefactor if necessity requires A Son is bound to defend even by the Sword if there be no other way his Wife and Children from the Sword of his Father and to save his Country by the Detection of his Fathers Treasons And many such Cases more there may be wherein intolerable wickedness on one hand and greater Obligations on the other cut off the Ties of Honour and Union between Parents and Children Husbands and Wives and all other Temporal Relations since what separates men from God may well disengage them one from another And to put a particular Case if a Prince marry a Kings Daughter and Heiress and the King after becomes suspected of an Imposture to pervert that Daughters inheritance and upon demand will not refer that doubt to the Arbitration of his own Senate but to elude the Hopes and just Expectations of his Son in Law Daughter and his own People in this and other momentous Concernments he puts all the Laws Liberties and Religion of his Kingdoms in a Course of Subversion and ruin under Arbitrary and Foreign Powers may not such a Son in Law endeavour to put a stop to these Measures and to force such a King to do right And is such Prince's Wife bound to oppose her Husband in these just Causes to abet her Fathers injustice and unnatural Impiety And if the Father being thus pressed by the Son in Law rather than do the justice demanded will fly for the succour of his injustice to another unjust King the Enemy of his People and in the mean time leave his Kingdom in Confusion which shall subject it more effectually to his Scourge upon his return with Foreign Forces may not such Prince and such Kings Daughter and a confused Nation unite and settle it against the ruins otherwise inevitable to them all For if Natural Ties sometimes give place to Civils of greater weight here surely is as fair and just an instance for it as well can be imagined or alledged out of History And that Civil Obligations of greater moment do preponderate against Natural you your self confess when you rightly say had not the constitution been for the time being lawfully altered the Crown coming to the Princess of Orange by meer Descent the Prince here must have been her Subject tho' by the Matrimonial Laws of Nature he is her Lord. It is indeed a melancholy Speculation when the impieties of such near Relations break off all the Natural Links of Duty and Union which must never be receded from as long as the Union is tolerable and consistent with Superior Obligations but of two Evils the least is always to be chosen and where two Offices are incompetible the more important is to be prosecuted And yet tho' this be lawful and necessary 't is sometimes a Tragical Scene under which even the Righteous Parties are to mourn and lament their infelicity in falling into such Straits and Temptations and are incessantly to pray that God would put a just and good End to the Disaster and in the mean time to make necessary Justice and Piety the only Rule and Reason of their Actions in such a State of Division and inevitable Contention And such being the form of the present Affairs if you needs will censure the Morals of your Sovereigns you ought to allow their Measures all the Charity the Case will bear which hitherto seems the Care of Gods Especial Providence for us And if it be so it is a dangerous thing to Curse whom the Lord hath Blessed But I have told you these things concern not us in our Civils and it is therefore best to leave things secret and above us unto God the Lord and Judge of all men But as to the Change it self it is an apparent delivery and blessing to the Nation in the best manner attainable by any means less than supernatural For a deliverance it is plain we needed which could never have been secured had King James continued undisturbed in his Reign Now if an unrelated Prince had desired to help us yet he had had no Civil Interests to have grounded a defence or rescue us from any Civil Laws or Laws of War Then the Sovereignty given to a Stranger had been a cutting off the Line Royal which neither Atwood or Johnson have * Since Johnson will give Richard Rich a Right yet asserted lawful by our Rules It would also have been a punishing the sins of the Father upon the Children and inevitably have involved us in intestine Wars Then again if the Princess of Orange had invaded her Fathers Kingdom and Crown by any Hostile Forms this would have looked more violent and unnatural and seems more than the Princely Lady in Temper or Duty could well or easily have attempted Time was before a calm and thorow consideration of things that matters seemed hard but I am now convinced that no other Person under Heaven could in human prospect be so proper a Redeemer as his present Majesty nor any Form of Settlement devised to fore-fend the Ruin of this Nation upon whose Strength the Security of
Allegiance to the * Lib. 1. Can. 27. King de facto * Ibid. Chap. 28. tho' he come into the full Settlement by wrong and injurious means and requires only a National Submission or a continuance of quiet possession to the form of * Ibid. Chap. 30. a full and thorow Settlement owning the original wickedness of the seizure to be no Legal Bar or impeachment to the Authority of their Government into which they are formally and fully settled And such was the State of the Caesars in the Empire when the two great Apostles required Christian Subjection to them not on the moral justice of their Titles of which they could be no Judges but on their actual settlement in the Concession and Submission of the Senate and other popular Powers And such also was the reason of subjection in those instanced Changes on which that Convocation wisely grounded this their now celebrious Determination But since you have again upbraided me with Mr. Johnson I cannot choose but observe how naturally men that run into contrary extreams do meet in the other side of the Sphere as you and your greatest Adversaries do in this present Controversie And you both therefore fall into the same absurdities Now here Mr. Johnson either understands not the formal Nature of a full Settlement of if he does he is inconsistent with himself For if as I have proved a National Admission constitutes a Settlement how can Mr. Johnson explode Settlement when he places the Right of Kings in the Admission of the People But if he requires any moral justice to make the Act of the People Rightful then if the People fail in that moral Justice how can their Constitution be really Right by which Justice it self is violated And such failure in a People is no impossibility except you will entitle them to an infallible Sanctity in all popular Actions As for example Mr. Johnson produces but one Authority * Arg. 1. p. 50 51. out of Knyghton to prove that Kings acting perversly against the Laws may be deposed and some one of the Royal Race advanced by the Peers and People I will not now strive to weaken the Authority and Credit of the Author herein nor the Truth of that Power which the then Lords and Commons claimed against their King neither will I alledge the many Changes and Statutes since that seem to have abrogated the popular right of Abrogation but suppose that this still is the Right of the Nation against their Kings yet if the People should on false pretences and imputations abrogate their King this Act could not be morally Just and Right tho' it were in form legal and if the Subjects that are innocent are not to admit what is thus externally Legal except it be also altogether Rightful then are they not bound to stand by any Popular Abrogations which they know or judge to be morally faulty and consequently may oppose all new Titles if they are founded in the real Right of such Abrogations And to come close home to the Case if King James were not really guilty of every one of those Enormities to a Title upon which such Statute did legitimate the Abrogation and the Convention had really abrogated their King without accurate conviction of all those guilts recited by that lost or undiscoverable Statute quoted by Knyghton then had their Abrogation been a nullity as not being Rightful But further if men shall object that Knyghtons relation of a Statute not seen by himself but only said to be objected by the Peers and the Commons is not a Record nor a valid Testimony to any Civil Consequences as being not upon Oath liable to Error and uncapable of judicial forms of Discussion besides its singularity where shall we find a bottom to authorize King James's abrogation For 't is not enough to a Judicial Conviction or effect or surmise that Richard destroyed that Statute in the Tower upon such a general crimination that he defaced Statutes of which there is no particular form of Conviction extant no not in Knyghton who yet is the only Traditor of this Transaction but you must bring us legal proof for what must legally concern us And yet nothing else that Mr. Johnson hath cited out of Law Books nor King John's Charter in the Pastoral Letter doth amount to a Popular Right of Abrogation but only to a limited power of resisting Kings on their oppression of the Laws and Constitutions So that whatsoever has in fact been done toward our several Changes must not all be taken or sworn to as Right but the consequent Settlements by National Acts must be taken for formally Legal for the time being and submitted to under that Notion leaving the real Right of the procedures to Gods judgment because there is none other under Heaven to adjust it above the National Sanctions Dyscher I did not interject the mention of Mr. Johnson to justifie all his Principles but only to alledge for our Cause those Right Concessions of our greatest Enemies as more candid and clear from jugling than you even in his greatest bitterness I will now dismiss him and produce you what a Friend of mine impartially reflected on this pretended Authority in the Judicial Opinions of Parliaments viz. that you cannot but know that this Power of Parliaments is absolutely denied by that Party against whom you dispute and we do not think it reasonable to be convinced without proof viz. that what is thus done is agreeable to the Laws of England MS. Reflect Eucher If you are not inwardly convinced of the truth of their Judgment upon their Power and of the lawfulness of their Constitution founded thereupon I cannot help that Neither is the Care of the State so much concerned to enforce such an inward conviction tho' it is to perswade it and to silence Contradictions But as I have often told you Judicial Opinions must overbear all private ones to the contrary as to all Civil Consequences This the peace of mankind the necessity of ending Controversies and the fundamental Reasons of Government do universally require so that you must assign some Superior Court or Judge within the Kingdom to be determined by if you will not stand to their Judgment or expose all to private judgments the first of which is impossible to be sworn and the later impracticable in a Society And to turn the dull point of this Objection on your self the Parliament doth not think it reasonable to be determined by Private Judgments especially those of the professed Enemies of their long-settled and immemorial Authority And what if I oppose the general Trust of the Nation in Civils to the publick Judgment of our Parliaments rather than the contrary Decisions of some private Zealots and Casuists whose Senses are seldom uniform often impracticable and always inauthoritative Will you here set your Private Judgments in battle array against the Authority and Judgment of the whole Nation and the Publick Estates thereof Or whether
the Learned Casuist to Suit his Principles if he can with the Conditions and Capacities of Human Life and after Good endeavours this way he will find that these Civil Questions are not of Private Determination But if there be such Dreadful Dangers of Immoral Devotions on such Contested Rights of Government they Naturally ly on them who in Civil matters Oppose their Private Conceptions and Practices to Publick and Judicial Constitutions which is a Course in its own Nature formally Seditious and for that cause Un-Christian and may too truly and sadly Corrupt their Communion and Defile their Devotions who will not know the ways of Peace Dyscher You will needs suppose that if it be the Life of King James then it is not the Breach of Gods Commandments that Incapacitates the Prince of this Crown But why may not both do it For because the Lawful King is Living and Claiming therefore the Commandments of God require of all his Subjects that they Pay him their Dutiful and Loyal Obedience They ought by all means to Support him in his Throne or Restore him to it as his Condition requires T. B. 2d Let. p. 20. Eucher In the Murther of a Parent King by his Son and Heir * Sol. Ab. p. 8. I proved that the sin did not Incapacitate the Parricide but that our Constitutions admit him to the Crown which you not being able to deny I conclude that Breach of Gods Commandments Nulls not a Title procured thereby And then you Assign the cause hereof that the Parent and all his Rights are Extinct by his Death but King James's Life and Contestation Diversifies his Case Then I rejoyn that it is not the Breach of Gods Commandments that Incapacitates the Princes of this Crown but the Life and Contention of King James And is not this an Accurate and an undeniable Observation For if Breach of Gods Commandments either alone creates or with other Causes concurs to a Civil Incapacity then such Breach doth either partially or solely obstruct such capacity And if so the Murther of a Royal Father must be some Bar to the Succession of the Parricide But if it be none at all in that Case why should a less Sin against God Preclude a Title in another Case in Conjunction with another Cause which yet your selves will not dare deny to be alone Enclusive of King Williams Title Here then I will sift you upon this Point Would the continued being and Claim of King James Incapacitate King William of the Royal Title if King William had never broken any Commandment of God or No If you say Yea then the Breach of Gods Commandments Contributes nothing to King Williams Incapacity which alone ariseth by it self from the Life and Claim of King James it being Naturally impossible for two Men to be Total and Separate Proprietors of the same Right at one time a truth not at all belonging to Ethic's or Divinity If you say No then you yield that King William may be Entitled to King James's his Throne without breaking Gods Commandments even during the permanency of King James his Life and Right And han't you hereby well amended the matter But such are the results of affected Sophistries especially when they are Impertinent also Now that yours are so will be hence Manifest For our Question last was whether no Settlements procured by Breach of Gods Commandments must be Submitted to and particularly such as follow the Extinction of the former Proprietors Tenure and Title through such ill means And now you Answer me that Gods Commandments do Incapacitate King William of King James's Crown because King James's Title is not Extinct but Lives with him Which if it had been true I should also have denied King William a capacity to the Title not from the Moral Law but from Natural and Legal Impossibility And therefore I suppose King James's Tenure first Extinct when I say * Sol. Ab. p. 8. But if His Tenure be Extinct as it hath been Publickly judged by this Nation our Oath to him Ceases tho' be contend never so much for the Recovery And there I take it for necessary that the Judgment of the Nation must overballance all your contrary private Opinions as to all our publick Duties and Obligations Now when your words are disinvolved they amount to no more than this that the Law of God forbids one Man to seize on another Mans Permanent Right and Title in which as it is nothing to the Rhombus so you have no adversary But this is not your second or single Failure but here appears a third point of Ignorance for our Question was not what Gods Comments do forbid but whether the doing what God forbids in order to the procuring formal Titles and Tenures in Law by the real or Judicial Extinction of another Mans Tenures does Create a Civil Incapacity or Nullity in the Tenure so acquired This is what I deny and I defie you to Prove The instance of a Royal Heir upon the Murther of his Father is an unmovable Argument for me for tho' the Laws of God forbid him to procure the Crown that way yet if he violates those Duties the Laws of God do not null the Tenure acquired by forbidden Wickedness The Law of God forbad David to Usurp Vriah's wife while the Hittite's Title in her continued with his Life and the King might actually keep her but by no Legal form of Tenure The same Law of God forbad the King to Murther Vriah with the Sword of the Children of Ammon in order to a Matrimonial Tenure of his wife Yet when that wickedness was compleated the Title of the King in Bathsheba was Legal and valid even by the Judgment and Ratification of God himself Nay when Ahab had slain Naboth by Judicial Condemnation for falsly imputed Blasphemy the form of Title by which he after enjoyed Naboths Vine yard was Legal by Judicial Forfeiture tho' it were Morally unjust in the sight of God for had there been a Civil Nullity therein it had been necessary for him to have compassed Naboths Death by Capital Sentence in order to a Civil Title which Jezebel procured for him this way to avoid the Odium of open and formal Un-entitled Usurpation So that had your Loud Obloquies against their Majesties morals been never so true Yet King James's Tenure being Extinct doth not preclude a Civil Title in their present Majesties which we are now to abide by and defend by the greatest Suffrage of Gods Laws Reason and the Laws of Nations at which expression I have heard that your Friend T. B. winds up his Mouth and * T. B's 2d Lett. p. 26. thanks God he hath not so Learned Jesus Christ And it is like to be true for he seems to have Learn'd but little of him at least in his Doctrine Learn of me for I am Meek and Lowly of heart and ye shall find rest to your Souls Dyscher To the Objection that Allegiance seemeth to imply
and the Sovereign too and can you say that he violated not our Laws in his way to the Crown Eucher The Prince of Orange being no Subject of England the process of his Expedition was in him no violation of Duty by him owing to our Laws which is the only form of Guilt that could have attainted his Right If then he cannot be charged with the breach of Civil Duties incumbent on him he is not incapacitated of Rights by any passages in that Expedition But moreover he came to preserve our Laws and Forms Liberties and Religion when they were all in a fervent Course of subversion And therefore tho' during his Marches the Execution of the Laws for the time being was interrupted in particular Cases and Military Officers were by him constituted in the Countries thro' which he passed all this was necessary as methods of Medicine for the time to recover the diseased state of the Patient to the Antient vigour of its Laws and soundness of Constitution But when King James left the languishing Nation unhealed the Prince left all to be legally Cured and firmly setled to the great Council of the Land that so no Man might have a Colour for Complaint that he affected our Conquest Vassalage or Suppression in our Civil Rights by any Arbitrary Power For which great Service they found out a fair way without Violence to any ones Right to gratify and honour him with the Crown or rather to secure all we had by such a Constitution If then the Prince of Orange was no Subject nor Enemy to the Nation but Friend and Patron to us and our Laws how can he be charged with an injurious violation of them And her present Majesty tho' more obliged to her Husband than her Father by the ties of Nature being a Native of England and so the King 's Subject in this Land never appeared here to disturb her Father or break her Native Allegiance But when her Father had fled out of the Kingdom from before her Husband as not daring to abide a Parliamentary discussion of their Causes and the Estates of the Nation determined to settle her Highness with her Husband in this Sovereignty she being thereupon sent to comes over and accepts that Settlement which the Nation thought so just and necessary and to which as such the Princess Ann conceded without any Remonstrance So that neither can her present Majesty be charged with any breach of our Constitutions herein which might obstruct her Civil Title of being Queen de Jure upon the Cession of her Father and her next Place in the Succession Which is I think so fair a Plea for the Recognition de Jure that if it cannot annihilate all prejudices to the contrary in all Persons yet is a just Reason to inhibit Contradictions in private Men who have very little Authority to Censure Publick Counsels and Determinations But tho' we have thus defended the Title de Jure yet as I said before we were not obliged to Swear it Nor did I ever hear of any Courts that loaded the Oath with such an Assertion of Right when their directive Judgments were required thereupon Dyscher This last is a lucky Hit I am glad you have awakened my Memory of some of your former Passages upon Interpretations of Courts for which you ought to be a little chastised For you say * Sol. Ab. pag. 10. That if they took not the Oath as the Parliament intended they took it as directed by their Majesties Judges What did their Majesties Judges direct the Oath to be taken otherwise than as the Parliament intended I desire that may be made out Did they do it judicially in Court I think that will not be so much as pretended If it be I desire to know when where and how If you say that a Judge did only discourse it privately that is no more than if any private Man had said so But to take off the pretence of this Salvo the Judges are not nor do pretend to be the Imposers And the Imposers King William and Queen Mary and both Houses of Parliament have declared what their Sense of the Oath is viz. that King William and Queen Mary are King and Queen de Jure M. S. Reflex Eucher This is no fairer in one respect than it is convincing in any For you repeat me as if I had asserted some general Sense of the Judges given to the Nation plainly contrary to the Sense of the Parliament according to which Judicial contrary Sense all Conformists had Sworn and so require me to make this out But my Senses are not so easy to be imposed on in my own Sentiments My Discourse therefore was * Sol. Ab. pag. 9 10. of the Senses of some particular Courts given or admitted to particular Persons upon occasional Consultations And I alledge that these Persons who were allowed an innocent Sense to Swear to did not prevaricate with the State tho' the Courts perhaps had really misinterpreted the Law But so far am I from the positive Charge of any Court herewith that I profess I neither know nor believe any Court to have incurred such a failure tho' this I have heard some of them burthened with by some of your greatest Woâ—â—hies And upon supposition of Truth in that impuâ—â—tion I yet assumed the Cause of the Swearers notwithstanding such supposed Error in such Courts according to whose Interpretation of the Oath if they Swore they could not be perjured or prevaricate For tho' the Judges of those Courts be not the Legislative yet are they Ministerial and Executive Imposers Judges and Interpreters for the Legislative to particular Persons on all emergent Questions in Law and what they herein do is valid to all Civil Constructions and Effects and to be taken as their Majesties own legal determinations of whom you too unwarily as well as untruly say that they and the Parliament have declared the Assertion or sense de Jure to be in the Oath for tho' that be the recognized Sense of their Title yet it is not their declared Sense of the Oath Which being cleared I need no Succour from the private Opinions of any Judges out of Court of which I made no mention which can indeed have no judicial obligations tho' by your Favour they may be of great weight to the satisfaction or Ease of a doubting Conscience towards its Conformity with the Laws Dyscher Indeed if the real Sense of the Imposer could be avoided and what Sense others please imposed the Oath might be taken in a thousand several Senses and not one come up with the Sense and design of the Imposers which in this Case always is the security of the Government Besides a thousand other Mischiefs would follow vacating all Oaths and destructive to all Governments and Human Society For if Oaths may be thus eluded Promises and Contracts would soon follow their Fortune as being less Sacred Now Sir you would do well to answer these and
and in their visible Communion During this Tract of time can any Man think that no Clergy Men had any Conferences with their Dissenting Bishops hereupon And in those Conferences did those Fathers Condemn and forbid these Prayers at which themselves were daily present No I believe no where and somewhere in several instances I know the contrary that directions have been given to use our present Forms But one thing I will further tell you that these innocent Fathers were not so gulled as you pretend in the first motions For upon the Enthroning of their present Majesties and the Change of the Prayers and Oath of new Allegiance the Recusant Bishops met together in Consultation how to act in these Affairs and after all Debates agitated they came to this Resolution that they would not oppose the Prayers for that it would seem too invidious and uncharitable to deny their Majesties our Devotions but determined only to stick at the Oath This I presume those Fathers will not deny and if any of them should hereafter challenge me for this Report I will give them my Author whom I presume no Man can Impeach of falsehood or Detraction But I would not have mentioned this had not you reproached me with the Lye even while you endeavour to cover the most evident Truths with Clouds and Darkness Nor do I mention this to cast a blemish on them For did not their Deprivations seem to them Schismatical I believe they would not have repudiated our Communion upon the mere account of our Prayers as neither did your great Coryphaeus till the Deprivation of the Primate All which is open Truth tho' these Fathers never read these Prayers which I never charged on them since 't is otherwise very rare to hear Bishops reading the Prayers in any Church whatsoever And this Concession to these Prayers being past on their most serious considerations there was no Cause why they should blow the Trumpet against what they judged lawful But had they really judged the contrary this concurrence had been worse than the neglect of winking Watch-Men or the silence of dumb Dogs to which I never compared them tho' your Censorious Rigours must brand this moderation with more infamous Characters as is evident from this Discourse of yours and the second Chapter of the first Part of your Treatise of Christian Communion And having thus vindicated their Equity and my Reverence thereof methinks such a Man of Manners as you have approved your self hitherto to be should have besprinkled our Fathers also a little more decently and not as generally you do with Tinctures drawn from the Lake of Sodom But to leave you to the felicity of your own good Humours I shall only observe what a silly innuendo you flurt upon the Secretaries or Council of State that they were in great fear what stirs these Bishops would make had they not concerted with Mr. Jones at the Savoy to carry on this Religious Intrigue in the Blind whereas these Fathers expected their determined Fate with all imaginable calmness and serenity as Men that well understood the patience of Saints And in that exemplary Patience they were impatient at those who thro' too great bitterness called our Conformity the Apostacy of the Church of England for the truth of which if you will not believe me I hope you will Mr. Dodwell to whom I therefore refer you for satisfaction And therefore you that would raise you a Monument out of those Flames you kindle by reproaching us with infamous Imputations recede from the pattern and act without the direction of your Fathers Dyscher Another Reason why we may lawfully join in those Prayers is because as you would Perswade us King James and your King William are very good Friends That King James is not among the number of King William and Queen Mary's Enemies MS. Reflex And you prove it for that the Prayers express him not and that you rank him not among the number of King William and Queen Mrry's Enemies For an Enemy is one that designeth to injure a Man and we are not sure that King James doth so design against King William But do you not verily believe that K. James would willingly regain his Crown if he could and consequently dispossess King William Or do you think this no Injury to K. William And no more say you can be intended in those Prayers of the Liturgy for King William than to defeat him King James in that Injurious intention For we pray for no Mans nor Kings Destruction or hurt These are * Sol. Ab. pag. 14. your reasons why no Jacobite ought to Scruple to join with you in the Common-Prayers for King William viz. To strengthen him that he may Vanquish and overcome all his Enemies because King James intends him no Injury Transubstantiation is easie to this This is perswading us out of all our Senses at once King James and King William appear upon the Head of two Armies * These two words might well have been spared to cover c. and Fight and each calls those Rebels that adhere to the other and yet they are not Enemies It is no hurt to the one if the other get the Victory and therefore you may Pray for Victory to King William without meaning any hurt to King James Why then are you offended at those that Pray for Victory to King James against King William Here is no Injury intended to King William only that King James may have a Victory that is all Is this the Argument to perswade Mens Consciences to join in your Common Prayers Is this the strength of your Cause The strong and solid Conviction of the sincerity and plainness of your Dealing MS. Reflex But supposing he will do no Wrong yet sure he may demand and endeavour to recover his Right And I am apt to think that your little ambitious Dutch Saviour would think no Man in the World so much his Enemy as he that demands three Kingdoms from him Nor do we call only those Enemies who design Injuries but even all who actually oppose each other or between whom there is any Contest let their Designs be what they will or their Cause right or wrong And after all your daubing he certainly is accounted the greatest Enemy for whose sake all others are judged Enemies Now tho' the King of France be such an abominable Enemy he should soon he esteemed the best Friend if he would but renounce the Interest of K. James and suport the Usurpation of the Prince of Orange T. B. Sec. Lett. pag. 32 33. Eucher In this Triumphant and fastidious Harangue these things severally offer themselves to our Consideration 1st Whether the Strength of our Cause lies in this Account of our Prayers 2dly Whether this be not the Sense of many Jacobites 3dly What is the full importance of the word Enemy 4thly What the importance of Vanquishment and overcoming 5thly What really is the lawful Sense of these words in the
Liturgy 6thly What is the Reason why Kings are particularly Named in National Prayers 7thly Whether our Prayers for King William must inevitably strike at King James 1. Then the strength of our Cause lies not herein nor fails in the Defects of this Account For in blunt Truth if King William and Queen Mary be our Sovereign Lord and Lady the same Prayers in the same full Sense are to be used for them in which they were used for all their Predecessors So that if King James comes into the Number of their Enemies against whom the perpetual Sense of those Prayers lies we cannot help that while we innocently perform our Duties The greatest Objection against this that I know is what your great Author of the Christian Communion herein offers that they that look upon new Sovereigns only as Kings de facto do herein pray for the Subversion of Right and him that has it and these make up a great Number of the present Conformists But that question properly comes under dispute upon the Notion of Enemies and Victory in our Prayers and on that Head it shall be considered The only question here is if a King de facto can be our Sovereign Lord This I know you deny and if your denial be good it presses our Prayers much if offered for a King by us taken for de facto only But if the Nation hath a lawful Right upon great Exigences to admit a Person into the Sovereignty who had no Right to enforce them thereto then as to the Nations part they have lawfully admitted him to be their Sovereign Lord and have yielded him all that Authority over us that the Laws of the Land in such Necessity allow us to concede And such is the Case in all Submissions upon new Conquests tho' injuriously gotten For in such Cases the submitting People being no Authentic Judges upon the Cause of the new Potentate can only judge for themselves what they may lawfully do and leave his Cause to God whether he on his Part takes the Crown de jure or no. Thus before the Recognition this Nation had de facto admitted K. William and every Person was bound to receive him at least for such and had there never been any Recognition de jure no Man was an habil Judge to have condemned the jus whatsoever Mens various Opinions in private might have been on which they ought to have laid no stress but to have received him as their actually settled and constituted Sovereign Lord and required no more since no more was determinately required of them If a Captive in Algiers c. be required to pray for his Lord and Master that is so only de facto he may certainly do so under those Titles and is bound to do so upon command if he has contracted Service I know you will here say this Contract gives the Tyrant Right But then you must grant that the Submission of a Nation passes Right ipso facto and then you put the Nation de facto only clear out of doors Here you will reply that such Submission cannot be de jure as being injurious to the present Right of another But then so will I say the Captives Submission and Contract is against the permanent Right of his Parents or former Master who thereby may lawfully rescue him by force of Arms. And yet notwithstanding this the poor Slave may thus pray for the Captivant as his Lord nay even that he may vanquish and overcome all his Enemies even while the former Proprietors are fighting for his Rescue in the same Sense we intend in our Prayers for our most rightful Sovereigns as shall clearly appear on the fifth Head of this Answer King William therefore being actually our Sovereign Lord even by our own warrantable Contract we may lawfully use these Prayers for him and on his Command are bound to do so even tho' he were only King de facto in the legal Sense of this Term and not altogether as we have owned him de pleno jure because it will appear that these Prayers are not levelled against any Man's Right tho' they are against all his Enemies Now the truth is the Relation we lately stood in to K. James as our then Sovereign makes tender hearted Men pity his whole personal History and consequently unwilling to pray against him if there be any fair or lawful way to avoid it which there is not if he comes not into the Number of those Enemies which we are to pray against Such also is the Temper of poor People under new Conquests toward their former Sovereigns when obliged to pray for the new that appear no otherwise than de facto such against all their Enemies Yet this is only an Operation of Bowels and good Nature but not of strict and impartial Reason tho' it influences much upon Men's Spirits but is to be guided and corrected in its Excesses thereby Hence upon the beginning of this Change an excellent Person that was easily satisfied in owning their Majesties Title Sovereign in the Prayers yet stumbled at the Passages about Enemies till he receiv'd with much pleasure this very Answer for which you deride me But as I have now said the only material Question here is if K. William and Q. Mary actually are our Sovereigns for this being granted all the rest follows of due Course without respect of Persons whosoever be their Enemies without exception But I confess I was willing to give you as healing a Lenitive as I could that I might not widen the Wound nor exasperate the Division but it seems while I labour for Peace you make you ready for Battel Secondly This seemeth to be the Sense of many learned Jacobites without which I see not how their Practices can be justified For not to repeat the Consent and Communion of the Deprived Fathers in these Prayers before the Day of their Suspension there are yet many moderate Men among you that read these Prayers tho' deprived for filing the Oath Now do you think that these Men direct their Prayers against K. James If they do then upon your Principles they break their Allegiance and Oath to him which they judge oblige them to this very Day Which methinks should make you less lavish of your perjurious Imputations upon others whose Principles acquit them from wilful and intended Perjury Yet there is no way for these Men of yours to avoid this Charge upon your Principles but by such a Sense of Enemies in which it is possible K. James may not be included But if they intend not their Prayers at K. James how are we charged for praying against him when we and these Jacobites in the same Words may sincerely use the same Sense so that in good truth the Account I gave of these Prayers becomes a Plea necessary not so much to us as to your own more moderate and equal Brethren against whom therefore for the future you must turn your Style and Acrimony Thirdly I will now
particularly named above other Orders in these national Prayers against Enemies And the reason is obvious because the interest of the whole Nations is summed up in the Felicity of their Kings So that they that are his Enemies are taken for the Nations Enemies also in these Prayers In praying therefore against K. William's Enemies we consider him not merely as a single solitary Person but as our Sovereign Head on whose welfare our own also depends and so in his Enemies we pray against our own also Seventhly we must enquire whether K. James must in our Prayers inevitably come into the number of K. William's enemies and so by civil Construction the Nations enemies Now when these Prayers were first ordered and received K. James was in no part of his old Dominions nor in any actual sensible military Hostility against K. William any where For tho' the Irish were in Commotion yet K. James was not there nor does it appear that they acted on his Commission but mere presumption and that not against K. William till his Armies came thither but their domestic Protestants only It seemed a while as if K. James had sat down and yielded up to his fate and state of desertion After the settled course of these Prayers re-animated by the French King he enters â—â—â—land and K. William follows In the mean time â—he course and sense of the Prayers was still the same râ—â—ning in generals and not altering by those changes bâ—yond the Irish Channel as there was no reason they should And so K. James was no more particularized after than before this in our Prayers Yet if his personal behaviour toward K. William at the Boyne doth not evince the contrary I will allow you that then he was a military enemy But still the grand question is whether also he was a moral enemy and so within the intention of our Prayers by his then present breaking it off from England and his designs thereby to recover England And plain it is that the sence of our Nation which is valid and cogent to all Civil obligations doth conclude him an injurious and moral enemy to K. William and this Realm For Ireland belonging thro' a long fixed Right to the Crown of England it must appear injurious after an effectual Abdication of this Crown and a Settlement of a Title therein upon K. William to invade Ireland and so to reduce us here under war for a recovery thereof and a defence of our own land from his illegal claims and pretensions And whereas without any sense of modesty you say that I assert K. James and K. William not to be enemies but good friends viz. that K. James is so friendly to K. William for that he intends K. William no injury you may resume your forehead and remember that I only said we are not sure that K. James designs K. William injury But what we are not infallibly sure of we may verily believe and presume from all the Rules of humane Judgment upon acts of Hostility And in all humane opinion his Invasion of Ireland was injurious but since all judicial Determinations must be left and referred to God's Judgment we not mentioning K. James in the number of K. Williams Enemies do not pass our internal and personal Censure on the Conscience of K. James before our God but remit that to God the Judge of all Kings and Nations But if private Persons will intermix their own personal opinions upon such superiour Causes where they need not then they who think K. James a moral Enemy to K. William do use our forms against him on that presumption of his injury they that do not think so of K. James do not in this form of Liturgy pray against him And the Liturgy not compelling us in the acts of our Religion to condemn K. James as morally injurious does not oblige any man determinately to involve him under any of our imprecations And whereas our Prayers are upbraided in the second Chapter of your first Book of Christian Communion as directed against Right for the maintenance of wrong it hereby appears how much mistaken that great Author was for whosoever can but comport with the Sovereign Style of their present Majesties may use these Prayers without prejudice to any real Rights of K. James or his own private opinions concerning it As to K. James's Personal hurt or injury let them that can feed an evil wish it for me God hath disabled him from overturning our Constitutions and hath settled us under good and equal Governours and that is enough and if K. James be elsewhere happy as long as he hurts not us we need no further trouble our selves or him And I do verily believe their present Majesties as little require my Prayers for his hurt as you do For time was when he was in the hands of K. William who had he designed to hurt him might have done it and thereby have prevented all the pretensions that have cost so much Blood and Treasure in Ireland But 't was piously done to abstain his hands from Royal Blood and leave the Issues of his undertakings to the Rules of innocency on which only he could dare to pray for and expect God's blessing But further you have forgotten one Argument perhaps because it was inconsiderable whereby it appears that our prayers are not pointed against any Rights of K. James or to any hurt of his Person for that we pray for all Christian Kings Princes and Governours even thâ—se against whom we wage open war And out of these Prayers we do not except even the most Christian King but pray for the preservation of him also in all his Rights our war not obstructing this practice of Piety even to our greatest enemies which we observe from the precept and example of our most blessed Saviour And therefore though it were true what you would seem to prove in form of Argument that K. James is accounted a greater Enemy and if you please add a greater King too than the French King yet no Enmity ought to be great enough to overcome our Religion and Charity in praying for our very greatest Enemies even while we pray against their Enmities But let us however see whether K. William and his Subjects do take K. James for a greater Enemy than the French King who it seems to you is accounted an Enemy only for asserting K. James's Cause First then if we take the moral notion of Enemy no man can judge whether K. James or K. Lewis has the greater internal enmity against K. William If we go upon the military notion it is apparently false that K. James either is or is accounted a greater Enemy than he that is the greatest in Arms of all the Christian Monarchs So that your axiom from whence you form your Argument Propter quod unumquodque est tale id magis est tale tho' true in Physical Causalities and Operations yet fails in moral Influences and Inducements such as are the reasons
valid yet because of their actual Omission it wanted an Ecclesiastical Effect Lev. 10. So when a Statute of Deprivation requires the Church to eject Recusants from their Stations if the cause be necessary or just the Statute is valid to oblige the Conscience of the Church to an executive and concurrent obedience yet if the Church will by no means yield to such command of the State whether just or unjust valid or invalid in its obligatory intentions it cannot actually pass into an Ecclesiastical Effect and Issue and all that the Civil Powers can do on the refusal is to subject the Church to temporal Punishments Nay in the same Genus of Civil Government the Decrees and Judgments of the Kings Courts notwithstanding their perfect justice and validity cannot have their Civil Effect if the subordinate officers neglect or refuse to execute them T is true there is a difference between the Civil obligations of Under-Officers to their Superiors in Secular Authorities and those of the Church to the Civil Powers in matters Ecclesiastical For that Civil Officers are obliged only to observe the Legal forms of process in the Orders of their Superiors and are not tied to enquire into the inner justice of those Orders But the Church when under any Laws or Commands of the State may and ought to judge for her self and her conscience toward God Whether the matters enjoyned her by the Laws be consistent with the Laws and Principles of Christianity and the Churches fundamental Constitution against which she is never to admit them to an Ecclesiastical Effect but must bear the penal Consequences with all meeknes and resignation And this is not only the Right and Duty of all Churches as sacred Corporations toward all humane laws in matters moral or Religious but of every single Christian also And if this be not admitted up goes Hobbism and the Civil Powers may enact Deprivations Excommunications and Anathema's for mens refusing the Alcoran Paganism Socinianisme and even Atheism it self and for owning the Scriptures Creeds and Sacraments But you that think us such a soft and waxen generation would have found this Right asserted even unto Martyrdom against all such deprivations had they been enacted upon causes apparently injurious or imposed on the Church For in the late Reign not only you but others also opposed the growth and menaces of Popery with a burning zeal when we had no present prospect of any thing but Fagots Dragons and most Christian Bridles And that all these Armies of Worthies should all of a sudden grow base abject and irreligious cannot easily I am sure not fairly be presumed But in cases which the Church judges equal she may concur and submitt and when she may so do it can be neither religious or prudential to provoke or incur a persecution by a needles and obstinate refusal which is our Sense upon the Causes and Law of the present Deprivations But is it not a pretty exception against this Concurrence because it is yielded by Submission not Authority For did I ever assert of an Authority in the Church to refuse her Duty against which certainly there lies no Authority And I told you †Sol. and Ab. pag. 28. that the Church here concurs by Submission as judging it her duty herein to yield to the State But in such Cases if you will needs require the Churches Authority I will remind you what I told you †Sol. and Ab. Pag. 29. last time that the Church has an Authoritative Right to judge in such Cases whether she may or must concur or no. And hence a Right essentially belongs to it to examin all the Causes of the Secular Demands so that if she finds there be no grave Reasons to move the Church to the required Severities she ought to disobey as my Lord Bishop of London well did when required to suspend Dr. Sharp indictâ Causâ c. And for this I alledged out of Nazianzen one of the Noblest Instances in all Antiquity wherein the Bishops of Cappadocia refused to depose or reject the canonically settled Bishop of Cesarea notwithstanding all Julians terrors and commands of which I wonder Dr. Hody took no notice But I add also that if the Church finds those Causes sufficient she may if necessary she must admit the Laws enforcing them and not wantonly pretend Authority against duty nor use her liberty for a cloak of maliciousness And I can never imagine that this Right of the Church was ever suspected much less opposed by any Powers or Legislators truly Christian But if Civil Powers will make irreligious Laws in maters Spiritual will you immediatly oblige the Christian Councils to invade the Senate House or Courts of Civil Judicature with Protestations against their Procedures before the Laws come home upon us and press us to actual Concurrence Surely the Primitive Christians did not so against the Edicts of Heathen Powers For tho' Christianity will warrant meek and petitionary Apologies yet will it not justifie sawcy Remonstrances and Prohibitions upon Legislators who must pass undisturbed and unaffronted in their measures and we must with all meekness of behaviour wait the eventual prosecution of the Laws if we cannot divert it by fair atonement and when it comes refusing calmly the required Sins commit our selves and Cause to him that judgeth righteously So that all your Harangues about running into Parliament House with Proclamations or Protestations for our against their Authority are injudicious immodest and seditious proposals tho' we had known the demands of the State to have been unlawful which we yet acknowledge to be otherwise And that we should cease to be a Church because we are not officiously rude to the Legislators who may sometimes happen to be causelesly unkind or hard hearted to us We are neither to precipitate our zeal manners confession or sufferings but let the will of God be done upon us when his own time comes Since even the vilest Laws of men have this obligation and validity upon the Consciences of Subjects to restrain all indecencies and disturbances against them and the Legislative For if the Senate has not Authority to oblige us to evil it has to modesty and abstinence from their Presence and Consultations But the Parliament thought their Authority alone sufficient to deprive the Bishops and did not ask nor think they wanted the concurrence of the Clergy to make their Act valid very well they did not think so And if you confine this sufficiency to a valid Obligation on the Church to submit and concur this opinion of the Parliament is very true tho' I believe they ground it not upon any mere pretended Arbitrary Despotick Power but upon the Weight and Sanctity of the Causes on which they founded the Law But if you think it the opinion of the Parliament that their Acts can actually pass into an Ecclesiastical Effect without Ecclesiastical Concurrence you fix an opinion on them rather to be charged with Non-sense than Falshood
none away nor made them break off from any just and due Spiritual Dependence on their former Bishops whose own heretical Doctrine and corrupt Ministrations had made the people cease from depending any longer in Conscience upon them They wanted only to be Lawfully empowered and regularly ordained themselves by Episcopal Imposition of hands as all those reformed Bishops plainly were and so were no Spiritual Intruders nor guilty of any Civil Vsurpation or Injustice But where Bishops are Orthodox and are deprived for their adherence to Truth and Righteousness both in their private Practice and Publick Ministrations the people are still left Spiritually to depend on them And so we our selves should have thought at least we all seem as if we should if by Gods Providence the Civil State had gone on to ddprive our reformed Bishops for sticking to the Doctrines and Worship of the Reformation and had set up Popish Bishops in their places c. Vide. Eucher This Doctrine of that learned Person must be admitted with a grain of Salt or else it will be very unwholesom and prove very convulsive in the Ecclesiastick Body For tho every single Christian is to abhor and defie all false Doctrine condemned by the unanimous Sense and suffrage of the Universal Church from Divine Authorities yet single Persons cannot distributively and alone reject their Bishops as not Bishops for heretical Opinions or corrupt Ministrations which the general Body and all Orders of the Church do not uniformly censure irregular and renounce their Authors except a just and regular Sentence pass in form against them When Churches are concorporated into Provincial and Diocesan Unions there must be some public conduct for the diffusive multitude to a due discussion of Principles in order to such Divorces Thus of old when grievances arose from suspected Bishops the people appealed to Synods to judge upon their Cause but in Cases notorious they addressed to other Churches Bishops and Synods to allow their necessary Rejection of their irregular Bishop and ordain them others And this usage was as common as useful till the Papal Usurpations rendred it impracticable in the Western Church and so necessitated extraordinary forms of reformation For here the Prince and the People and a great Body of the Clergy having an Ecclesiastical Cause of Controversie against the Marian Bishops unrelievable by any fair domestic or foreign Synod were forced upon the Notoriety of the Evil to use extraordinary measures of purgation not by rabble or incoherent Partitions but by a National Judgment in Parliament as a middle expedient as well against intestine Schisms as Romish abuses upon which discharge of Papal Tyranny a way was opened to that true and uniform Sense of true Religion which the whole emancipated Church presently received with a glad and chearful Uniformity which was a felicity however not atchievable by a loose unorganized Multitude Since then the whole People of this Land did in their National Senate Vindicate the pure Religion established in former Convocations from the Marian Bishops the enacted Deprivation was designed more against their Spiritual Conduct than their Temporal fortunes and the People followed that publick intention not their own private counsel in the reception of new Bishops and the models of reformation And herein such measures of prudence were observed which cannot be secured in a promiscuous multitude which I wonder that Author did not consider For a Priest is not immediatly upon dropping of an Error materially heretical to be taken by all at random for a formal and self-deprived heretic or Anathema but he must be previously heard and admonished and only upon incorrigible Obstinacy to be rejected with appeal unto God and an apology to all Churches or Spiritual Fathers unconcerned and untainted But then this is a Canonical form of exauctoration by the Church not a formal Self-deprivation otherwise upon this Authors Principle all the Hierarchy of the Romish Communion was long self-deprived before the Reformation and totally exauctorated and how then will he justify our Episcopal Succession For such ipso facto irregularities that are so in their own nature and not by mere Canonical Ordinance degrade as well as deprive from not only Order but Communion to which of old upon Penitence they were wont to be restored not as Priests but as Laymen for that such a fall was an ipso facto Degradation of Order in which there were to be no public Penitents But now if we make such Deprivation the Act of the Christian People as we must then it and all the previous process thereunto must be executed by some formed Session or Council for the Place and People concerned but for the whole People of this Land we have no Council but that of Parliament And here it must be noted that a Christian Parliament hath as much Spiritual Right against heretical Priests as the common Christian Multitude and if the Multitude may on such notorious Corruptions eject one and procure another Bishop even without the Consent of civil Powers according to this Authors Doctrine surely such Right much more belongs to the Christian Legislative to which the Care of Religion does by Divine Ordinances belong as well as to the Hierarchy and common Multitude which had a real need of their Counsel and Conduct in so great a Difficulty The People therefore in Parliament did their Part in the Ejection of the Marian Bishops and all the Chapters and other Ecclesiastical Orders sequaciously concurred and completed the Design of that Act in their Alienation from the condemned Recusants And tho' all this was done for refusing the Oath of Supremacy yet that Recusancy being grounded on false Principles in Religion and maintained in Defence of the Romish Usurpations and Corruptions the Statute of Deprivation had not only a civil Intention but Religious also and was received accordingly But all this while I find no Answer to that famous Passage quoted by me †Sol. and Ab. Pag. 32. out of Dr. Hammond's Tract of Schism tho' of so great Moment and of so great Strength to justifie such Statutes of Deprivation for the Security of the civil Government against Seducements and Seditions But if you would take my Counsel I would advise you not to lay the Cause of this Controversie in Points of Religion nor make common People the Judges of them for fear of a Snap that perhaps you are not aware of Dyscher What what do you mean I am a little startled at this Suggestion since we are where we were and have neither altered the old Doctrines nor the Practices they direct to Eucher Do not you remember that that great Man who wrote the Vindication of the Deprived Bishops vehemently argues †Vindic. of Depr Bish pag. 24.25 26 27. that not only Errors whether great or small but even unnecessary Truths become Heresies when they are made the Causes or Characters of different Communions And such all Principles and Rules of Christian Morals inforced on peril of Sin
Union Eucher As to that Principle of the Identity of Church and State and the Consequences Men draw from thence to assert the Right of Civil Authority in Spiritual Processes I leave it to them whose Heads are clear enough to justifie it But for my own part allowing your exceptions to the contrary yet our Case has justified it self ex naturâ Rei And I must further advertise you that this Church has long submitted to the use of such Powers over us and that fundamentally in Q. Elizabeth's Reformation and in many other matters in which the State had not so much pretence of Right or Necessity all which have passed uncensured by us but in this whether well or ill God must judge The Subscription of a Popish Clergy to avoid a Premunire drew after it such Acts of Parliament as thro' which we can make no provision for the Church noâ— move a question for her good without Royal License nor have so much freedom in our Concernments and Duties as every little Corporated Burrough has in it's voluntary Councils which tho' it be a tolerable Condition under a good King that has a Zeal for Christianity yet under an Irreligious King 't is an absolute Bondage and bar to the Primitive Purity Course and Vigour of Religion In the Reign of Edward the VI. they struck out the Ordinaries names out of all Processes Ecclesiastical and set in the Kings as if all Church Power had been derived from the Crown the non-payment of Tenths tho' omitted by mere neglect and not on any Principle of Opinion remains yet a Cause of Deprivation And those shackles which the State of old thought necessary to restrain us from Popery now the reasons of that Conduct are cessant become great Obstacles to the Primitive and Catholic Reformation of our yet remaining defects of which thâ—s Church upon a just liberty and Authority restored her would become the first Example and the noblest Standard Yet all this Subjection we have born in Silence tho' hereby only can Popery be reduced whensoever a Popish Conjuncture shall arise upon us and no Body has yet dared to offer a good mediation with the Public for a Temperament in these things And if our dulness herein has not been by us or you accounted Schismatical shall we be judged Schismatics in admitting these much more reasonable Deprivations in which the Lay-powers are concerned not only in point of Care and Interest but even in certain and undubitable measures of Right Dyscher How so Sir Eucher As the State is the Churches Hospital so a Corporal or Civil Communion is substrate to the visible Communion of the Church For tho' I allow you what you * Sol. ab pag. 25. justly challenge to the innocent a primitive fundamental and undeniable Right to good as well in common as in consecrated Places yet it is certain that in order to this Claim they must give all just security and assurance of their innocency upon Test demanded by the Civil Powers that are Guardians of these fundamental Liberties to all good Subjects of which innocency an Oath of Allegiance seems the most obvious proper and usual Form of security between Subjects and Sovereigns Otherwise the Civil Powers may restrain those Libeties of which they are the Trustees Thus a Civil Soveraign may prohibit and punish all conversation with the Enemies or Recusants of his Civil Authority Now conversation simply in it self alone is a secular communication but absolutely Fundamental to the Ecclesiastical which is a visible Communion in Spirituals Though then the Secular Authority alone as such does not touch the Spirituals yet it may upon just and legal Causes take away all that secular and local Communion that is substrate to the Ecclesiastical And he that may upon Recusancies of Subjection forbid all personal Communication with a Recusant may forbid it in any certain Place Time Matter or Measure and consequently at all such Times and Places when and where the Recusant may call upon him to attend in Spirituals But this Right and Authority of the Magistrate I lodge not in arbitrary will respectively but on the nature and merit of the provocation And the Right which the Christians have to the Liberty of their Sacred Functions is not peculiar to them as Christians by a Charter altogether unconditionally exempt from Civil Powers and so a Right of Gods positive constitution in the Church as a Society founded by Christ liable to no secular Reflections for any Cause whatsoever but is a common and natural Right to all Persons of clear and unspotted innocency as such to do that which is good originally due to them from the Creation And hence Civil Powers becoming Judges of our Morals and Innocency are Guardians of that natural Right but may justly deny it to others but will not approve their innocency by due Tests to the Public Peace of the Government to which Recusants therefore the rightful Capacity Ecclesiastical Communion is lost when the natural Right to Society is either totally or in the proper opportunities of sacred Communion justly denied by the Civil Powers And to say true he that by ill Principles or Practices deserves the loss and deprivation of all common Society much more deserves the deprivation of the Spiritual that stands as a Super-structure on the other And therefore if our ill merits Authorize the Powers to take away at the bottom the Foundation of our Religious Commuion they can tho' not directly and immediatly touch yet undermine the spiritual Structure by destroying its secular Foundation which lies within the Authority and Care of Civil Powers So that in this respect and form an Heathen Prince may rightly deprive seditious or disloyal Priests of the Priviledge of actually using their Ecclesiastical Functions by rightly denying them so much secular Society as is Fundamentally requisite to the exercise of them And thus far a Statute of Deprivation may have this Civil obligation that no Subject shall yield corporal Communion with Recusant Priests when they call him to sacred Offices any where and Laws may shut them out from consecrated Places that there may be no such local Society in them And if such Recusancy against civil Powers be notorious confessed or avowed then is such Act of State both just and civil only but at the same time the bottom of the Recusants Ecclesiastical Offices is righteously and validly taken away Dyscher Well well notwithstanding these Subtilties yet the Temporal Powers cannot take away the actual Relation between Priest and People tho' they may suspend or incapacitate them hereby from the actual Ministeries of their Orders And so hence accrues no Right to civil Powers to impose new Bishops on the Church Eucher There are two known Canonical Causes of depriving Spiritual Persons Immoralities and erroneous Principles So that if either of these hath merited and drawn after it a Forfeiture and Deprivation of all that secular and local Communion and Society which is necessary to the