People that were then under an obligation of obedience to a lawfull Sovereign and consequently had no power to dispose of themselves or to become Subjects to another no more than he had a right to become their King untill he that promised him he should be so had made him so which he could and infallibly would have done in his own good time without any thing done on Jeroboam's part but the relying upon the promise of God onely which he distrusting or being too impatiently ambitious to stay for the performance of it took his own seditious and rebellious way for the hastening as he did afterwards for the keeping of himself to be a King For as he caused the ten Tribes to revolt from Rehoboam in order to the making himself their King so he caused them to revolt from God also by setting up other Gods and other Priests and other places of worship thereby making a formal Schism in the Church to prevent a possibility of re-union in the State So that as he sinned and made Israel to sin for the getting so he sinned and made Israel to sin much more for the holding and keeping of the Kingdom which he might have had and kept much longer than he did if he had stayed God's leisure for the having and done nothing to displease God for the holding of it Whereas if he would have done as David did he should have had the success that David had without sinning himself or making so many Thousands to sin with him and for him as hedid David was not onely told by the Propet Samuel that he should be King as Jeroboam was by the Prophet Ahijah but he was anointed too which Jeroboam was not And yet when it was twice in his power to have stept up into the Throne by destroying Saul whom the men of these times would have said as Abishai did that God had delivered into his hand to be destroyed by him he would not doe it nor suffer it to be done but said God forbid that I should lay my hand on the Lord's anointed as the Lord liveth the Lord shall smite him or his day shall come to die or he shall descend into battel and perish howsoever the Lord forbid that I should stretch forth mine hand against the Lord's anointed This was David's resolution and this should have been Jeroboam's resolution also to have expected God's performance of his promise in his own time and in his own way and not have snatched the Crown out of God's hand and put it himself upon his own head before God had anointed his head for it Moreover it is observable that is was not that for which Ahijah the Prophet told Jeroboam God was so angry with Solomon that he would rend away ten Tribes of the twelve from his Son which was Idolatry it was not that I say which Jeroboam pretended to be the cause of his rising and rebelling and his stirring up the ten Tribes to rebell against Rehoboam but it was a more popular pretence and such a one as the generality of the People is usually most concerned in and concerned for namely the publick grievance by Taxes and Tributes which how necessary soever for their own defence and safety do always seem an insupportable burthen to the Subjects And therefore the ambitious Aspirers of all times have always made use of this Topick first to discontent the People with their present condition though it be never so tolerable nay never so good a one and then to promise them a relief of all their imaginary grievances if they will be ruled by them which the foolish People believing first call them their Patriots and afterwards if they can make them their Princes who commonly prove the greatest of Tyrants and then the People that raised them find and feel the fruits of their own folly and when it is too late to help it repent of it And yet such is the incorrigible madness as well as folly of the multitude that though it hath been never so often entrapp'd it always hath been and still is and ever will be apt to be taken with the same bait how dear soever it hath cost them formerly It was not long before this that Absalom by the counsel of Achitophel made use of the same artifice to stir up the people and to make them to rebell against their King and his Father by making them believe first that they were oppressed by David and had not justice done them and secondly if he were in power every man should have right done him and no man should have cause to complain amongst them This they were so foolish as to believe though their condition then was better than ever it had been before or ever it was afterwards for it was David a man after God's own heart that was then their King and who as himself or rather God's Spirit by his mouth tells us fed them with a faithfull and true heart and ruled them prudently with all his power and if prudently then justly no doubt also and yet it was his not doing of justice that was made the pretence of the rebellion against him and by whom by Absalom one whom the People knew to have been a murtherer of his own brother and therefore not to be a very likely man to govern them either more justly or more mercifully than his Father did so that as the pretence of their rising up against David was groundless so their setting up of Absalom in his stead was folly and madness And now one would have thought the ill success they had in that action would have made them more wary than to be tempted and prevailed with again so soon at least as afterwards they were to another rebellion against the Grandchild of David upon another and that perhaps upon as groundless a pretence as the former I mean this of Jeroboam which we are now speaking of For the pretence of Jeroboam and the ten Tribes rebellion against Rehoboam was because he would not ease them of the heavy yoke which they pretended Solomon his Father had laid upon them which had it been true to never so great a degree would have been no just cause of the Rebellion of Subjects against their Sovereign as is already shewn But I do not find in the History of Solomon's Reign from the beginning to the end of it as it is very particularly recorded in the first book of Kings and in the second of Chronicles any mention of so heavy a yoke or indeed of any yoke at all that was laid upon any of the Complainants I mean upon any of the ten Tribes of Israel I reade indeed in the fourth Chapter of the first book of Kings Verses 20 21. That there was a great Tribute or Levy made by Solomon for the building of that glorious Temple of God in Jerusalem which was the wonder of the World and for other his many and magnificent
And therefore when our Law saith the King can do no wrong the meaning is not as I conceive that the King cannot do that or command that to be done which is really a wrong or injury to any or perhaps to many or all of his Subjects as David did when he numbred the People for which sin 70. Thousand of them were swept away by the Plague in three days But the meaning of that Maxime in our Law I say as I humbly conceive is that if the King should do or cause to be done never so great a wrong yet he is not legally accountable or questionable or punishable for it by any power on Earth and much less by any of his own Subjects Whereunto another Maxime of our Law seems to be a Witness which tells us that the Crown takes away all defects or that he who is King is not chargeable with or answerable for whatsoever he hath done amiss And hereunto the Law of God bears witness also For in this sence it was that King David confessing those two great sins of Adultery and Murder unto God saith Against Thee Only have I sinned not as if he thought he had not sinned very highly and heinously too against Bathsheba and Vriah by defiling the one and murdering the other but because he was not accountable to or punishable by any but God for it Any other Man of the Nation that had committed either of those Crimes must by God's own Judicial Law have been put to death for it without mercy How came it to pass then that David who was notoriously guilty of both those capital Crimes was never called to account for either or both of them The reason is plain because there was none that had Authority to call him to an account for it not any other King for all Kings properly so called are equal as to the right of non-subordination to one another and Par in parem non habet Imperium a Peer or equal hath no right of Authority over his equal or Peer and much less Inferior in Superiorem an Inferiour over his Superiour for such are Subjects of all Qualities and in all Capacities in relation to their Soveraigns But did David then escape unpunished No for God who is only their Superiour and therefore the only Judge of Kings did question and arraign and judge and condemn and punish him for it though not by shedding his blood for the blood that he had shed yet by shedding the blood of his darling Son Absolom which was more grievous than the shedding of his own blood would have been to him as appears by his so often and so passionately wishing he had dyed for him Be wise therefore O ye Kings and be learned O ye Judges Ye that are Supreme Judges here on Earth and think not because you cannot be punished by Men therefore you shall not be punished at all if you deserve to be so for Reges in ipsos Imperium est Jovis the Almighty God's rule and authority is over Kings themselves could a Heathen man say The exemption of Kings from being punished by Men doth make them the more obnoxious to be punished by God either here or hereafter and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith the Apostle 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 it is a fearful and terrible thing to fall into the hands of the living God But of the punishment which Kings are to expect from God I have spoken before as likewise why Kings who are Monarchs or Kings indeed cannot be question'd or called to account for any thing they have done or may be supposed to have done amiss because they have no Superiour That which I am now doing is to prove our King to be a Monarch because he hath no Superiour nor is ever a whit the less a Monarch because according to the legal Establishment or constitution of our Kingdom our Kings cannot make Laws for their Subjects without the consent of their Representatives that is without their Subjects own consents in Parliament For I demand how comes it to pass that they cannot Is it not because they did at first out of their meer grace and favour to their Subjects give away the Power they had formerly of doing otherwise William the Conqueror from whom our Kings ever since derive their Right and Title to the Crown could and did make Laws for the People without asking or having their antecedent consent to them It is true the Conqueror himself when he was crowned King took an Oath to govern justly and afterwards he took an Oath to observe the Antient Laws of the Realm established by his Noble Predecessors the Kings of England and especially those of Edward the Confessor as Daniel tells us but it is true too as the same Historian tells us He brought in the Customes of Normandy so that the main stream of our Common Law with the practice thereof saith the same Author flowed out of Normandy notwithstanding all Objections that can be made to the contrary And it was the Son of this Conqueror Henry the First who because saith the same Author he would not wrest any thing by an Imperial Power from the Subjects took a course to obtain their free consents to serve his occasions in their General Assemblies of the three Estates of the Land which he first convoked at Salisbury in the Fifteenth Year of his Reign which had from his time the name of Parliaments according to the manner of Normandy And in all probability as this was the beginning of our Kings not raising of Money so was it likewise of their not making of Laws but with the consent of the Representatives of their People in Parliament But whether it began then or sooner or later I am sure it must be the Kings granting of it that made it to be what it is I mean the legal way of proceeding in order to the making of Laws by our Kings for the Government of their People A most excellent way indeed but such a one as whosoever may have been the deviser or advisers of it it could never have been established as it is but by the King 's voluntary and arbitrary consent to it I say his arbitrary as well as his voluntary consent to it because it was in his power whosoever the King was that granted it first not to have granted it if he would CHAP. IX Mr. B. 's whimsey of an antecedent Compact between the King and People Their consent to the making of Laws when ever brought in a thing of Grant not of Contract Their double Capacity as Mr. B. fansies and states it FOR to think there was any Government here in England before that of Kings or that the People when they were under no Government at all did or could unanimously consent to be governed by one whom they should choose to be their King upon such or such conditions and with such or such limitations reserving to themselves such or such
forbid the Christians to resist did wish the whole body of the Roman people had but one head that he might cut it off at one blow and another of them had set the capital City of his Empire on fire commanding his Souldiers to kill all the Citizens that endeavoured to quench the burning of their Houses he himself in the mean while playing upon an Instrument all the time it was a burning Neither will I insist upon the Judgment and Practice of the Primitive Christians who though they knew their Sovereigns the Heathen Emperours had professed they would and really did what they could to destroy all their Christian Subjects yet the Christians did not think that either this profession or practice of their Sovereigns which was an evident and undeniable demonstration of their implacable hatred against them was sufficient to dispense with them for resisting of or for defending themselves against them as was notably exemplified by what was done and suffered by Mauritius and his Legion according to that Heroical story before recited But I will not insist I say upon any Argument drawn from any religious Topick to justifie my denial of any exception to be made to the general Rule of non-resisting of Sovereigns by their Subjects or for dispensing with Subjects to resist their Sovereigns in any case whatsoever though possibly there may be such a Case as Barclay and Grotius out of Barclay puts even among Christians But that which I insist on at present is this that abstracting from the consideration of what God hath either commanded or forbidden in his Word as likewise from the consideration of Heaven or Hell or of any other life after this where men are to be rewarded or punished for what they have done here it is not onely prudent and convenient but absolutely necessary to the peace and welfare and safety and happiness of all mankind here in this world that men should be taught and believe that the resisting of Sovereigns by their Subjects is always and utterly unlawfull in any case whatsoever yea though possibly such might be the Case as that they would all be destroyed if they did not resist and that for these reasons First Because it is not onely very improbable but as Grotius himself saith scarcely credible there should ever be any such Case Secondly Because according to a Maxime of our own Law A mischief is better than an inconvenience that is as I conceive it is better for a State to run the hazard of a greater future evil which may either not happen at all or if at all very rarely than for the avoiding of it to admit or submit to a lesser whereunto it may always and must very often be obnoxious Thirdly Because if it be allowed to be lawfull for Subjects to resist their Sovereign in such a Case as Grotius puts or in any other case whatsoever it will be always and altogether as dangerous both to Prince and People as if it were granted in never so many other cases also because that one may alway be pretended to be the present case and the People may be always made to believe it is so though it be never so improbable to be so As may appear by divers Examples besides those I have already quoted out of Scripture especially that of David who though he was the best of Kings that Nation ever had yet his Son Absalom made the People believe that he neglected to doe them justice in hearing their complaints and redressing their grievances and thereby stole away their hearts from his Father saith the Text and made them to rebell against him But to instance in one Example or two more nearer home and nearer our own times It is not long since the Princes of the House of Lorrain I mean the Guises being excluded by Henry the Third of France from the chief managery of affairs which they formerly had in that Kingdom resolved to gain that by force which they could not keep by the King's favour and to that end to stir up the People under some publick and plausible pretence to joyn with them in a rebellion against the King But what that pretence should be which the People should be baited withall being debated by the chief of the Faction and some being of one mind and some of another Henry Duke of Guise being head of the whole party stood up and said What need is there of any debate or consultation as to this particular can there be a better or more plausible or more efficacious Motive to stir up the People to joyn with us against the King than to make them believe the Catholick Religion is in danger and that the King is not onely a favourer of the Hugonotts but a Hugonott himself in his heart and therefore that it is absolutely necessary for all good Catholicks to joyn in an Association or Holy League for the defence of the Catholick Faith and to oppose the bringing in of Hugonott Heresie against all persons of all conditions whatsoever and consequently the King himself It was easily agreed to by all the rest of the Conspiratours that this was a very plausible pretence indeed but withall so incredible as to the King 's particular as that it would not be very difficult onely but impossible to make the People believe it and consequently to make them rise up against the King upon that account it being generally known and believed that that King was as Bigott or zealous a Roman Catholick as any was in France having been himself not a Spectatour onely but an Actour also in the Massacre of the Hugonotts at Paris not long before and was still such a Devote that he was never almost seen in publick but betwixt two Capuchins with a Crucifix in his hand and his Beads at his girdle Whereunto the Duke of Guise replied laughing Let me alone said he with the managing of that part of the affair I will undertake within one month by those I will set on work meaning the Jesuits the Friars and other Popular Preachers to make the King to be believed over all France to be as arrant a Hugonott as any in Geneva And so he did whereupon that Rebellious Association which by its Godfather the Pope was called the Holy League was made against the King and as bloudy a War as ever was in France was raised and maintained by it neither did it end with the death of the King who was murthered by a Jacobin Friar but continued against his Successour upon the same pretence and with the same intentions the deluded People in the mean time being made to believe by their Ghostly Fathers that it was God's Cause they fought for and that those that died or were killed in it were sure to go immediately and directly to Heaven without dropping into Purgatory by the way Another Example of the same kind we had here of late amongst Our selves that is of the Peoples being stirred up by
Where is the security thereby provided for the Lives Liberties and Properties of Free-born English-men when an arbitrary Vote of the House of Commons if it be believed as Mr. Baxter saith it must be by the People and be put in execution as Mr. Baxter cannot deny but it may be because it hath been may take away any mans life how innocent soever without any farther process or a legal proof of any crime against him For who is there that can secure himself from such a Vote or that can be secured after he is devoted by such a Vote from being killed by the next man that meets him in the Streets for there be more Feltons saith Mr. Baxter than one neither will the hanging of one discourage all the rest from hazarding their lives upon the same account as long as they are possessed and actuated with the same principle viz. that it is not only lawful but a glorious and meritorious deed to kill any man that is an Enemy to the Publick and withal that he is obliged to believe that any or as many as the House of Commons shall declare to be so are so It was high time therefore for the King to give a stop to such proceedings by dissolving the late Parliament to prevent the proscribing of all that were about him and employed by him and perhaps the remonstrating against himself also as their Predecessors had done against his Father which Remonstrance made by the then House of Commons as it was intended and made use of at first by the Presbyterians to begin and carry on their Rebellion against the King and his Party so was it made use of at last also by the Independents for the destruction of the Kings Person the pretended male-administration of the Government which was the matter of the Remonstrance being that for which he was indicted and condemned and put to death by the Independents And yet that very Remonstrance it was that Mr. Baxter in the place before quoted saith the People were obliged to believe and consequently to act thereupon as afterwards they did and yet good man he was in the mean time far from being guilty of any hurt to the Kings Person or destruction of his Power But why was he or the rest of the People obliged to believe either that Remonstrance or his Declaration of the House of Commons were they infallible that they could not be deceived themselves or were they impeccable that they could not deceive others neither the one nor the other For Mr. Baxter himself tells us it is well known that Parliaments quà tales as such are not divine religious Protestant or just That sometimes the major part in either or both Houses may be the worst And therefore I should think not always to be believed in what they declare nor always to be complied with by the People whose Trustees they are in whatsoever they command or undertake For if They be such as Mr. Baxter saith They may be may They not betray their trust and act contrary to the Interest of those that trust them Yes saith Mr. Baxter they may and consequently may saith he forfeit their power as well as Kings nay in some cases saith Mr. Baxter We are all that is the whole Nation to take part with the King against the Parliament as First If they would depose the King unjustly or change the Government or Secondly If they notoriously betray their trust in fundamentals or in points that the Common good depends on as if ever any Parliament did That we are now speaking of did and did it most notoriously there saith he the Peoples duty is to forsake them and to cleave to the King against them But who shall be Judg whether they do so or no or if there be a division betwixt those between whom the Sovereignty is divided as Mr. Baxter supposeth it is betwixt King and Parliament here in England and the one usurps or is pretended to usurp upon the other What then why then saith Mr. Baxter it belongs to the People to judg whose cause is best and to resist the usurping party But the People as he tells us in another place cannot themselves judg for themselves and therefore saith he the Constitution of the Government having made the Parliament the Trustees of our Liberties hath made them our Eyes by which We must discern our dangers And therefore as he saith a little before in the same page We are obliged to believe them as the most competent Witnesses and Judges and the chosen Trustees of our Liberties So that if there be a difference betwixt the King and the House of Commons and the House of Commons would depose the King never so unjustly or change the Government never so notoriously or betray their trust never so perfidiously yet if the House of Commons themselves will not say they do so but declare the contrary the People are to believe them and to side with them against the King yea and against the House of Lords too if they joyn with the King which how it can consist with the Doctrine of Co-ordination or with his own aforesaid Assertion that in some cases the People are to cleave to the King against the Parliament he were best to consider In the mean time thanks be to God We have a better and a more certain Rule of right and wrong and to be guided in what We are to believe and do than an arbitrary Vote of the major part of the House of Commons and that is the known Law of the Land For verissimum illud saith Grotius ubi semel à jure recessum est incerta esse omnia when we are once out of the road and rule of the Law we know not whither We are a going nor what we are a doing If therefore the question be Whether the late War was made against the King or no it is not a Declaration of the House of Commons or of both Houses either pro or con that will decide the question but Ad legem ad legem it is the Law that must do it and the Law hath done it For when the Earl of Essex in Queen Elizabeths time at his Arraignment for Treason and Rebellion against the Queen because he took up Arms without her Commission pleaded that he did it for the Queen and not against her because his meaning was only to remove Cecill and Cobham and Raleigh and other evil Councellors that were about her and were hers and the States Enemies as well as his protesting then as Mr. Baxter does now that he meant not any the least hurt to the Queens Person or diminution of her Power upon which often reiterated protestation of the Earls especially that of his meaning no hurt to the Queens Person the Sages of the Law that were Assessors to the Lords that were his Judges being askt by the Lords what was the Judgment of the Law in that Case
him or equal to him or partaker in any part of the Sovereignty with him he cannot be said to be the only supreme Governour of this Realm and of all other his Dominions and Countries as by the Act of Vniformity those of the Kings Subjects that are to teach all the rest of their fellow Subjects are obliged not only to say but swear he is nor is it so much as to be imagined that the King Lords and Commons would have obliged any to take such an Oath if they themselves had not believed the whole subject matter of it to be true CHAP. XI The Oath of Supremacy further explained The Kings being declared the sole supreme Governor cuts off all pretence at home as well as foreign claim I say the whole subject matter of it for there be evidently two several distinct parts of that Oath both of which every one of them that takes it is equally obliged to swear unto of which the first is Assertory and the second Promissory In the former he that swears asserts the Kings Sovereignty affirmatively affirming him to have the sole supreme power over all Persons in all Causes within his Realms and Dominions and then negatively by denying any foreign Power or any without his Dominions to have any Jurisdiction over any of his Subjects or to have any thing to do within his Dominions And it is in regard of the latter of these two clauses only that this Oath can be said to be enacted and imposed for the discovery and conviction of Papists and that not of all Papists neither but such Papists only as believe the Pope to have the supreme Power over all Christians in Spirituals at least if not in Temporals whose Subjects soever they may be in Temporals But as to the former of these two Clauses in the Assertory part of this Oath which affirms the King to be sole Sovereign or that he is the Only supreme Governour in this Realm it seems principally if not wholly to be intended to assert the Government of this Kingdom to be Monarchical and to make it be acknowledged to be so For by swearing that the King is the only supreme Governour of this Realm c. they do virtually and by necessary consequence swear also that all other Governours within the Realm as they do severally and joyntly derive their Power of governing from him so they are joyntly as well as severally subordinate unto him and therefore none of them either severally or joyntly co-ordinate with him Because if any of them or all of them in any capacity were so or believed by the Parliament to be so the Parliament by enjoyning men to swear the King is the only supreme Governour of this Realm must needs be chargeable with enjoyning Perjury or which is worse with compelling others to swear that to be truth which they themselves do not believe to be so which cannot be avoided but by concluding that the Injunction of the Oath of Supremacy by Parliament is a Declaration of Parliament that this Kingdom is a Monarchy properly so called because the Sovereignty or supreme Power is in one Person only namely in the King and if in him only then in him wholly also And that this was the Parliaments meaning in prescribing and enjoyning that Oath of Supremacy may farther and if it be possible more undeniably and demonstratively be made to appear it is very observable that in the Rubrick prefixed before the Administration of that Oath which Rubrick is a part of the Act of Parliament as well as the Oath it self it is said the Bishop shall cause The Oath of the Kings Supremacy And against the Power and Authority of all Foreign Potentates c. to be administred c. It is observable I say that in the aforesaid Rubrick there is a clear and a very notable distinction made betwixt the two first Clauses of the Assertory part of the Oath namely betwixt the Clause affirming the King to be the only supreme Governor of this Realm and the Clause denying any foreign Prince Person Prelate or Potentate to have any Jurisdiction Power Superiority or Authority Ecclesiastical or Spiritual within this Realm The distinction I say by the Rubrick made betwixt the two Clauses is very notable for it is the first of them only that is called by the Rubrick the Oath of the Kings Supremacy whereas the latter is said to be against the Power and Authority of all Foreign Potentates and therefore is more properly to be called an Abjuration than an Oath And yet it is this Abjuration only that Mr. Baxter will have to be meant by the Oath of Supremacy whereas this abjuration is not the Oath of Supremacy it self but a Deduction only from the Oath of Supremacy For because the King is the only supreme Governour of this Realm therefore neither Pope nor any other foreign Prince Prelate or Potentate can claim or pretend to any Supremacy or part of Supremacy here in this Kingdom So that he that can truly swear the one may safely per modum sequelae by way of consequence swear the other also But though the truth of the former doth necessarily infer the truth of the latter yet the truth of the latter doth not necessarily infer the truth of the former For though it be never so true and never so undoubtedly acknowledged to be so that no Foreigner or none without the Realm of what quality or denomination soever doth or can justly pretend to the supreme or any part of the supreme Power either Civil or Ecclesiastical here in England yet supposing the supreme Power to be divided as Grotius supposeth it may be in some Kingdoms and Mr. Baxter saith it is here in this Kingdom it will not follow I confess that the King is or that the Parliament that made this Act and enjoyned this Oath to be taken did thereby acknowledg the King to be the only supreme Governour of this Realm But the Parliament by injoyning the Oath to be taken and those that take it not only abjurare to abjure or for swear all foreign jurisdiction but jurare to swear positively and plainly That the King is the only supreme Governour of this Realm over all Persons in all Cases and Capacities do evidently declare that They themselves believe and acknowledg the King to be so and consequently whatsoever division there may be of the supreme Power in other Kingdoms yet in this there is none For the first the most immediate and most natural deduction from this Proposition viz. The King is the only supreme Governour of this Realm is the excluding all others in this Realm from having any thing to do with the supreme Government of it And therefore the swearing to this Proposition alone is called by the Rubrick the taking of the Oath of the Kings Supremacy the following abjuration of all foreign Authorities being but a deduction and that not a primary but
as when he saith unto them Come they must come so when he saith unto them Go they must go according to the legal and established Constitution of our Government Which being so I wonder how the two Houses can be said to be co-ordinate with the King or how the Soveraignty can be said to be divided betwixt the King and the two Houses when neither of them are Houses till he makes them to be so nor continue to be Houses any longer than he will have them to do so Indeed if the two Houses of Parliament were Bodies that were always in being as the Senate of Rome was and as the Senates of Venice and Genoa now are or such as might assemble and meet together when and as often as they pleased and continue together as long as they pleased as the States of Holland may and do now and as Grotius tells us they might and did even then when they had Kings such he means as were called Kings but were no more Kings indeed than those of Sparta were as Grotius himself tells us in the same place if I say our two Houses of Parliament were such a Senate as were always in being or might be so when they pleased and continue so as long as they pleased there might perhaps be some pretence for their having some part in the Soveraignty But when they have no being at all till the King gives it them by calling them together and are reducible to what they were before that is to no being again whensoever he pleaseth to dismiss them I cannot imagine in what sence the two Houses of Parliament can be said either to be Co-ordinate with the King or to have any share in the Soveraignty or Kingly power I am sure that according to the established constitution of our Government as they have not yet so it is and always will be in the Kings power to prevent their Usurpation of any such power as long I mean as he keeps the power of calling and dismissing that is of making and unmaking them in his own hands and confequently of acting any thing in their Parliamentary capacity to the prejudice of the Crown or of the People I say to the prejudice of the Crown or of the People because what is really prejudicial to the Crown is really prejudicial to the People also howsoever or by whomsoever the People may be and are often made to believe otherwise and are not to be convinced of their error but by their feeling only CHAP. III. The Legislative power solely in the King How far the Parliament concerned in making Laws Dr. Sanderson 's judgment of it Mr. B. ascribes the whole Soveraignty to the Vsurpers upon the Kings loss of his Part against a Thests of his own BUT although it be the King's Summons of them or calling of them together that makes them to be the two Houses and consequently that inables them to act as the two Houses or in their Parliamentary capacity and although they cease to be two Houses or to have any power to act in a Parliamentary capacity when the King pleaseth to dismiss them yet because Mr. Baxter may say that as long as they are two Houses or as long as the King permits them to sit together in their Parliamentary capacity they have a Legislative power or right of making Laws together with the King for the whole Kingdom and consequently are partakers of the Soveraignty with the King also the making of Laws for the whole Nation being undoubtedly one of the Essentials of the Soveraignty or supreme power We are therefore in the 3d. place to inquire what the two Houses do or legally can do as to the making of our Laws and whether that be enough to entitle them to be properly called Legislators or if I may so speak Collegislators with the King All that ever I heard that either of the two Houses severally or both of them joyntly could legally do in order to Law-making is but the framing and proposing or offering unto the King such Bills or materials as they think fit to be made Laws by the King if he think them fit to be made Laws also Here is the two Houses Non-ultra hitherto they may go but no further And sure it is not the proposing of any thing to be made a Law that is the making of a Law or that can prove the Proposers to be the Law-makers especially if he to whom they propose it may choose whether he will make it a Law or no as there was never any doubt made but he might before the rebellious Parliament in the late Kings time broached the contrary together with many other Anti-monarchical Paradoxes to justifie their own Anti-monarchical and rebellious Practices against the known Laws Customs and Constitutions of this Kingdom of which this was one of the most essential that as the Houses had a liberty to pass and propose Bills to the King so the King might as he saw cause or thought fit make or not make them to be or not to be Laws by giving or not giving his Royal assent unto them For it is the Kings Fiat or the stamp of Royal Authority upon them that makes those Bills to become Laws obliging all the Kings Subjects to the obedience of them or for non-obedience to the Penalties appointed by them So that the Bills are but the materia ex quâ the matter out of which Laws may be made but the forma per quam the formalis ratio or intrinsecal and specifical form by which what were before Bills become Laws is the obliging power which the King by his Fiat breaths into them as God doth the Soul into the Body to make it a living and a rational Creature And therefore Mr. Baxter who being so Metaphysical a man as he is as he must needs know that it is forma or causa formalis the form or formal cause per quam res est quod est which makes every thing to be what it is must needs know too and if he have any ingenuity confess likewise that from whence and whence only the Laws have their obliging power which is formalis ratio Legis that which makes Law to be Law from thence and thence only those Laws must have their being also and consequently if it be the King's Fiat only that gives those Bills that are by the two Houses presented to him an obliging power over the whole Nation thereby making them of Bills to become Laws the King and none but the King must needs be the sole efficient or maker of those Laws For as Forma est causa per quam res est quod est so Efficiens est causa à quâ res est quod est As the Form is the cause by which the thing is what it is so the Efficient is the cause from which the thing is what it is by introducing that form which makes it to be what it is
If therefore the Law hath its obliging power which is its form or that which makes it to be Law from the King and the King only the King and the King only must needs be the efficient and sole efficient cause of Law and consequently the whole Legislative power must needs be in him only unless Mr. Baxter can prove that the two Houses of Parliament can of themselves and by their own Authority only make their Bills to be Laws or at least that they joyn with the King in making them to be so For if it be the Kings own arbitrary consent only which makes that to be a Law which was no Law before he consented to it then must it needs be confessed that the King is the sole efficient of all Law and consequently the only Law-giver in his own Kingdom according to the determination of the very learned judicious and truly pious and conscientious Casuist Doctor Sanderson Bishop of Lincoln who in his Lecture de Legum humanarum causâ efficiente speaking of our King hath these very weighty and remarkable words Cùm illa sola censenda sit cujusque rei causa efficiens principalis sufficiens quae per se immediatè producit in materiam praeparatam introducit eam formam quae illi rei dat nomen esse etsi ad productionem istius effectûs alia etiam concurrere oporteat vel antecedere potiùs ad praevias dispositiones quò materia ad recipiendam formam ab agente intentam aptior reddatur omninò constat quotcunque demùm ea sint quae ad legem recte constituendam antecedenter requiruntur voluntatem tamen principis ex cujus unius arbitratu jussione omnes Legum Rogationes aut ratae habentur aut irritae esse solam adaequatam publicarum Legum efficientem causam Seeing saith he that is to be held the principal efficient and sufficient cause of every thing which of it self and immediately produceth and introduceth into the matter prepared for it that form which giveth name and being to that thing though for the producing of that effect other things also must concur or rather precede as previous dispositions to make the matter fitter to receive the form intended by the Agent to be introduced into it it is certain for all that how many soever the things are that are antecedently requisite for the constituting of the Law the Will of the Prince on whose alone arbitrary consent or dissent the ratifying or rejecting of such Laws as are tendred unto him doth depend is the sole and adequate efficient cause of all publick Laws This I say was the judgment of that very learned pious and very judicious Casuist Dr. Sanderson concerning the only proper adequate subject of the Legislative power here in England who was Professor of Casuistical Divinity in the University of Oxford as long as the Rebellious Parliament would suffer him to be so and who would in all probability if he might have been suffered to have continued some few years longer have left us a truer and more exact and compleat body of Casuistical Divinity than any the World hath been so happy as to see yet and in which the World hath more need to be truly and thoroughly instructed in order to peace here and happiness hereafter than in any other part either of Polemical or Dogmatical Divinity the Essentials of the Creed excepted only But that very reason it was for which the Vsurpers of the Regal power in those times would not suffer so vigorously an Opposer and so strongly and clearly a Convincer of that Trayterous and Tyrannical Vsurpation of theirs to be a publick Professor and Standard of that truth which they were concern'd the People should be kept ignorant of or made to believe the contrary as they were by such Preachers as they who could not endure sound Doctrine heaped up unto themselves after their own Lusts and by such Casuists and Writers of Political Aphorisms as Mr. Baxter was whose business it was to make the People believe the Vsurpation of an Arbitrary power and Tyranny to be an Holy Common-wealth for such was the Government here which Mr. Baxter in his Preface to that Book of his calls the best Government in all the World affirming those that were then the Governours namely the two Houses of Parliament without the King not only to have a part of the Supremacy or Soveraignty but to have all the Supremacy or whole Soveraignty and therefore such as whom to resist or depose is forbidden saith he to Subjects upon pain of damnation They are his own words in the before-cited place which one would think were hardly to be reconciled with what he affirms in the place we are now examining viz. That the Supremacy or Soveraignty is divided betwixt the King and them and consequently that they have not the Supremacy but a part of it only But for answer to this Objection perhaps he will say as indeed in effect he doth say that although before the War betwixt the King and them they had but a part of the Soveraignty only yet the King having by force endeavour'd to take their part from them and being overcome by them he had lost his own part which jure belli by right of War did accrue to them and so they became the Possessors of the whole Soveraignty though the King was then living But he had ceased to be King saith Mr. Baxter because he had entred into a state of War with his People and consequently by Mr. Baxter's Logick had lost his part of the Soveraignty But who was to have his part of the Soveraignty supposing him to be justly deprived of it Those that had the other part of it by whom he was conquered No saith Mr. Baxter for if saith he a Prince that hath not the whole Soveraignty be conquered by a Senate that hath the other part and that in a just defensive War that Senate cannot assume the whole Soveraignty but supposeth that Government in specie to remain and therefore another King must be chosen if the former be incapable CHAP. IV. Mr. B. 's high strain in commending those for the best Governors in all the World whom yet he owns to be Intruders and Vsurpers His compliance with Richard remarkt His high commendation tax'd and challenged The Recapitulation WHat he means by the last words of this Thesis viz. Another King must be chosen if the former be incapable I know not unless he means that the former King though he had lost his part in the Soveraignty and ceased to be King by being conquered by the Parliament in a just War yet he might be capable of being King again if the Parliament thought fit to choose him which having used him as they had done Mr. Baxter no doubt wished as heartily as he thought it likely they would do But whatsoever Mr. Baxter meant by these last words of this Thesis
Law of in their Opinions if he please and if it be so in his opinion also So that the King is finally the only and sole Judge whether what is agreed on and propos'd by them as fit to be made a Law be fit to be made a Law or no and if he thinks it fit to be so it is he and none but he that by his Le veult makes it Law So that to conclude this Point the thing proposed whether by King or either of the Houses is the Matter or material cause ex quâ or out of which the Law is made the Efficient or the causa à qua whereby or by whom the matter of the Law is made to be a Law is the King and the King only the Formal cause or the cause per quam res est quod est by which a thing is that thing which it is or that whereby it actually becomes and is effectually made to be a Law is the Kings declaration of his Assent or Will to make it a Law by those Nomothetical or Legislative words pronounced by himself or in his Name Le Roy le veult the Final cause or the cause propter quam Res est for which or for the sake whereof a thing is is Bonum Publicum the Publick good So that the consent of the two Houses to what is proposed to be made a Law is but that which we call Causa sine quâ non a Cause without which a thing is not to be which indeed is a condition rather than a cause but such a condition as is so necessary for disposing of the matter to receive the form that the efficient cannot introduce the form without it though he be not necessitated to introduce the form by it that is it is such a condition as without which the King cannot make what is so conditioned to be a Law though it do not necessitate him to make that to be a Law which is so conditioned so that as I said before it is but Causa sine quâ non only which is indeed no cause at all And this I think enough to prove the Legislative power to be in the King and in the King only and consequently that the Soveraignty upon this account is not divided betwixt the King and the two Houses either equally or unequally or that they have any part of it or share in it And yet upon this Supposition and upon this supposition only Mr. Baxter concludes first that the Kingdom of England is no Monarchy And Secondly that the Parliament's defending of their own part of the Soveraignty against the Kings Invasion of it was a just War and no Rebellion By the first of which Conclusions he seems to think that there is no Monarchy but where the Government is Despotical and Arbitrary ubi Arbitria Principum as Justin saith pro Legibus sunt where the Will of the Soveraign is the Law of the Subject And such indeed were the first especially the Eastern Monarchies of the World and yet not altogether so neither as appears from the 7th compared with the 15th Verse of the 6th Chapter of the Prophecy of Daniel for as in the former of those Verses we find there was a consultation by a Senate or Parliament of all the Presidents Governours Counsellors and Captains of the Kingdom of Persia for the making of a Decree or Law by the King which he did by his signing of it so in the latter of those Verses we find also that it was a standing Law of or amongst the Medes and Persians that no Decree or Statute made by the King with the advice of an Assembly of the chief Men of his Kingdom could be changed or repealed without the consent as I presume they meant of those that advised the King to make it So that there were or might be some fundamental unchangable Laws or Rules even in the most absolute and most despotical Monarchies for such was the Persian if ever there were any and yet you see there was a Law by which the King himself was obliged And probably the like was in the former or first Monarchy that of the Chaldeans or Assyrians also For as Darius here so Nebuchadnezzar there called all his Princes and great Men when he made a Decree that all that would not fall down and worship the Image he had set up should be cast into the fiery Furnace Dan. 3. 12 c. CHAP. VIII The English Monarchy asserted The King under no Judicatory Accountable to God alone That Laws are not to be made without the Peoples consent in Parliament was from the favour of the Kings THE Truth is that it is not the Governing by Law or without Law that makes the Government to be Monarchical but the governing of One over all whether his way of Governing be Arbitrary Despotical or Legal and Political Ours indeed is Legal and Political but for all that it is Monarchical because it is but One that governs us all He governs indeed and is obliged and hath obliged himself by his Coronation Oath to govern by Law but it was not his Coronation Oath that made him King for all our Kings are as much Kings before they take the Oath as they are after the taking of it Neither is it their governing by Law that gives them their Right nor their not governing by Law that can take away their Right they have unto their Crowns for then there must be some Judicatory above them to judge betwixt them and their People whether they have forfeited their Right or no and if they have to take the forfeiture of it And if there be such a Judicatory it is indeed no Monarchy though it may be called a Kingdom as that of Sparta was as I have proved at large already Mr. Baxter therefore if he will prove this Kingdom of ours to be no Monarchy he must prove there is some such standing Judicatory here amongst us as the Ephori were in Sparta If he saith the Parliament is such a Judicatory He must prove it to be a Court or Judicatory always in being as that of the Ephori was and as the Senate of Venice is and not such a one as must not meet but when the King calls them and must be gone when he bids them and such a Judicatory is our Parliament according to the Legal Constitution of this Kingdom And how such a King as ours can be liable or obnoxious to such a Judicatory as this which he may make or unmake as he pleaseth so as to be question'd or tried or judged or condemned by it as the Spartan Kings might be and were by the Ephori and as the Dukes of Venice may be and have been by their Senate let Mr. Baxter tell us if he can For my part I cannot imagine the Practicability of it I mean the practicability of it de jure as to right in any Case or upon any Provocation whatsoever
deny them to be of right due unto them as appears by the late Kings answer to the Petition of Right but due unto them not by capitulations and contracts with them before they were Subjects but either by Donations or by Concessions of our Kings to them when they were and as they were their Subjects Neither is it denied but that the People now have and of right ought to have Representatives in Parliament of their own choosing But that this was not nor could not be always so and that it was by the Kings meer Grace and favour when it first began to be so appears by what I have already observed concerning the first Parliament properly so called here in England instituted by Henry the first and as Daniel one of the most judicious of our English Historians tells us after the manner of Normandy But that ever since it hath bin so I deny not neither namely that the People have had have and ought to have such Representatives in Parliament of their own choosing but to represent them not as they were no body knows when as Freemen before they had Kings or were under any Government at all but as they are now and have been ever since and were long before there were Parliaments I mean as Subjects and consequently such as Mr. Baxter confesseth have no other lawful way of redressing their Grievances if they have any though never so great or so many but their Representatives complaining and petitioning the King for the relief of them and that either by desiring him to put the Laws in execution already made in favour of them as they did in the late Kings time by the Petition of Right or to Enact if need be new Laws for explanation and confirmation of the old ones or to punish those by whom the Legal Rights and Priviledges of the People have been Violated All this I grant the Peoples Representatives in Parliament may and if there be cause for it ought to do and that not as they are the Peoples Representatives only but their Trustees also nay and more than this namely not to promote or give their consent to the making of any such Laws as may be prejudicial to the publick though they may seem to gratify or may seem to be serviceable to the People nor to hinder the passing of such Acts as are really for the Peoples good though perhaps to the Major that is the most unwise and least judicious part of the People themselves they may seem to be otherwise And therefore their Representatives and Trustees as they are to consent or dissent so are they to judge for them what is or what is not to be consented to by them in behalf of them They are not always the best Husbands for the People that are most sparing of their Purses especially when the refusing to part with some may hazard the loss of all Neither is every thing that is got from the King a gain to the Subjects for the King's power may be too little to protect as well as too great to oppress them and according to the present conjuncture the former is much more to be feared than the latter And therefore the best service that can be done for the People by their Representatives in Parliament is to keep the Balance even betwixt the Prerogatives of the Soveraign and the Priviledges of the Subject by not indeavouring to intrench upon the one or to enhance the other but always and above all things to remember that as they are themselves Subjects so they are Representatives of Subjects and Trustees for Subjects as they are Subjects and therefore are not to treat the King as if they were Coordinate or Copartners with him in the Soveraignty but as it becomes Subjects and the Representatives of Subjects and such as have the honour of being there in that capacity and have the liberty of promoting or hindring the Laws that are to be made for those they represent from the meer Grace and Favour and Goodness of the King and his Predecessors and therefore the King is not by them nor by those they represent to be esteemed to be less a King or less their King or less their Soveraign than he was before no more than a Father is less a Father or hath less the Authority of a Father the kinder and more indulgent he is unto his Children or a Husband hath less of the Authority of a Husband the kinder or more indulgent he is to his Wife And therefore it is well and prudently observed by Grotius first Non desinere summum esse imperium etiamsi is qui imperaturus est promittat aliqua subditis aut Deo etiam talia quae ad Imperii rationem pertineant Soveraignty or Soveraign power doth not cease to be Soveraignty or Soveraign power though the Soveraign do restrain himself either by promise to his Subjects or by Oath to God even in such things as are essential to the Government And therefore Secondly he observes likewise that Multùm falluntur qui existimant cùm Reges Acta quaedam sua nolunt rata esse nisi à senatu aut alio coetu aliquo probentur partitionem fieri potestatis They are very much deceived saith he that think that because there be some Acts that Kings will not have to be ratifyed unless they are approved or consented to by a Senate or some such assembly that therefore there is a partition of the Soveraignty Mark that Mr. Baxter and tell me whether any thing can be more apparently contradictory to your Main Principle of the Soveraignty's being divided betwixt our Kings and their Parliaments and to the main and only reason you give for it namely that our Kings do not or if you will cannot make Laws for the People without their Parliaments or without the Peoples Representatives in Parliament consent to them For the only reason why they cannot is because they have obliged themselves by promise to their People and by Oath to God at their Coronation that they will not For ab initio non fuit sic from the beginning of our English Monarchy it was not so as I have at large shewed and as I have proved likewise that this and all other Priviledges of the People had their beginning from the bounty and goodness of our Kings to their People when they were their Subjects and not from any bargain or contract of the People before they were Subjects with any of their Kings as Mr. Baxter fondly as well as falsly imagins without any proof or offer of proof out of any of our Historians or Records for it Whereas the truth is that all our Kings except the Brittish of whom we know nothing of certainty I mean all our Kings of the Saxon Danish and Norman Races coming in by Conquest were not only Monarchs but Despotical Monarchs that is such as governed arbitrarily without any Laws at all but that
believe and as all reasonable men have reason to believe he will because he did not only consent to but promote the making of that Law in Scotland And if he be willing not only to consent to but to promote the making of such a Law here why should we not believe that he intends and resolves to keep it and maintain it also whatsoever his own private perswasion in point of Religion may be for the present for God may and I hope will perswade Japheth to dwell in the Tents of Shem or continue to be for the future For if he did not intend and resolve it should be kept when it is made and consequently that Popery and Arbitrary Government should be kept out by it nothing could be more imprudent than to promote the making of such a Law whereby all that have or are to have interest in the making and repealing of Laws and in all places of trust and power Civil Military and Ecclesiastical in both Kingdoms are to be obliged by Oath never to consent to the alteration of the Government as it is now by Law established nor consequently to the bringing in either of Popery or Arbitrary Government which Oath when they have taken as they cannot be dispens'd with for the breaking it if they would so they would not if they could being such as are to be supposed to be enemies both to Popery and Arbitrary Government and therefore such as would do what legally they could for keeping out of both though they were not sworn and much more being sworn to do so And therefore it is not to be supposed that the Successor intends or means to attempt the bringing in of either of them if he be willing such a Law should be made as will make it exceedingly difficult if not utterly impossible for him to do it Let us try therefore whether He will not consent to the making of such a Law here as willingly as he has done in Scotland and let the consenting or not consenting to the making of such a Law here as there is there and the taking or refusing to take such an Oath as by that Law is prescribed to be taken by those that are to choose or to be chosen Members of Parliament for the future be the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the mark of trial whereby to Judge who are friends and who are enemies to the present Government and who are most likely to desire and endeavour an alteration of it CHAP. XI Some of Mr. Baxter 's Principles grounds of Rebellion An unhappy Instance of difference about Priviledge betwixt the two Houses of Parliament AND thus I have done with what I thought my self especially concern'd to do namely the justifying of my Exceptions against those Political Theses in Mr. Baxter's Holy Commonwealth whereby he endeavours to justifie the Rebellion against the late King and to countenance and encourage any Rebellion upon the same grounds against this or any other of our Kings for the future For first if the Soveraignty was divided then betwixt the King and the two Houses of Parliament so it is now and so it will be always as long as the present constitution of our Government shall continue Secondly if where the Soveraignty is divided they that have any share in it may by force of Arms defend their part of it against whosoever attempts to take it from them Thirdly if the two Houses are to be believed and assisted by the People whensoever they shall declare that the King takes away or attempts to take away their part of the Soveraignty all which are Mr. Baxter's Political Aphorisms or Maxims of State doth it not follow that when and as often as there is a corrupt Majority in both Houses as Mr. Baxter grants there may be and we by woful experience have found there has been doth it not follow I say from these Principles of Mr. Baxter's that the People not only may but are obliged to rebel and take up Arms against the King whensoever a factious Majority in both Houses shall declare there is though really there is no such cause as they pretend there is to do so Nay if there be but such a factious ill principled or ill affected Majority in the House of Commons only For it is the House of Commons which Mr. Baxter means when he talks of the Peoples Representatives and Trustees whom they are to believe and whom they are to assist And they are says he the Representatives and Trustees of the People not only in the Condition of Subjects as the People are now but likewise in the Condition of Contracters as they were before they were Subjects and as such did by contract reserve to themselves such and such Priviledges and Exemptions from Regal Jurisdiction which the House of Commons as they are their Trustees in that Notion are bound to defend as they the People are bound to assist the House of Commons in defending of them And the representing the People by the House of Commons under this Notion together with their having a part of the Soveraignty as well as the House of Lords is by necessary consequence from Mr. Baxter's principles to justifie the Peoples making War not only against the King but against the King and House of Lords also if they shall not agree to whatsoever the House of Commons shall propose as an Original reserved right of their Representees as they were Contractors and before they were Subjects And of their Original reserved rights they may pretend to as many as they please for it is but their saying they are so and the People must believe them to be so because they are not their Representatives only but their Trustees also and therefore it is by their Eyes says Mr. Baxter that the People are to see and by their Ears that the People are to hear and by their Declarations that the People are to judge whether their Rights and Priviledges be invaded or no and whether they be such rights and priviledges as were granted by our Kings after they were Kings to their People as graces and favours to their Subjects or such as were contracted for with Him that was to be King before he was King by those that were to be his Subjects before they were his Subjects For it seems by Mr. Baxter's distinction that the People may take Arms against the King to defend or recover the one but not the other And therefore it were to be wished that we had an Authentical Catalogue of those we may fight for that we may not be Rebels before we are aware as likewise it were to be wished also that we had a Catalogue of the Priviledges of both Houses of Parliament that knowing them we might take the better heed of offending against any of them especially considering how great a crime it may be and how great a punishment it may deserve if either or both the Houses are partakers of the Soveraignty
other Persons imployed in Writing or Agenting The Lyon King at Arms Heraulds Pursevants and Messengers at Arms all Collectours Sub-collectours and Farmourers of His Majesties Customs and Excise all Magistrats Deans of Gild Counsellers and Clerks of Burghs Royall and Regality all Deacons of Trades and Deacon-Conveeners in the said Burghs all Masters and Doctors in Universities Colledges or Schools all Chaiplains in Families Pedagogues to Children and all Officers and Souldiers in Armies Forts or Militia and all other Persons in publick Trust or Office within this Kingdom Who shall publickly swear and subscribe the said Oath as follows viz. The Arch-Bishops Chief Commander of the Forces and Officers of the Crown and State and Counsellers before the Secret Council All the Lords of Session and all Members of the Colledge of Justice and others depending upon them before the Session The Lords of Justiciary and those depending upon that Court in the Justice Court The Lords and other Members of Exchequer before the Exchequer All Bishops before the Arch-Bishops All the inferior Clergy Commissars Masters and Doctors of Universities and Schools Chaiplains and Pedagogues before the Bishops of the respective Diocesses Sheriffs Stewards Bailies of Royalty and Regality and those depending on these Jurisdictions before these respective Courts And Provests Bailies and others of the Burgh before the Town Councill All Collectors and Farmourers of the King's Customs and Excise before the Exchequer The Commissioners of the Borders before the Privy Council All Justices of Peace before their Conveener And the Officers of the Mint before the General of the Mint And the Officers of the Forces before the Commander in Chief and common Souldiers before their respective Officers The Lyon before the Privy Council and Heraulds Pursevants and Messengers at Arms before the Lyon And His Majesty with consent foresaid STATUTS and ORDAINS that all those who presently possess or enjoy any of the foresaids Offices publick Trusts or Imployments shall take and subscribe the following Oath in one of the foresaids Offices in manner before prescribed betwixt and the first of January next which is to be recorded in the Registers of the respective Courts and Extracts thereof under the Clerks hands to be reported to His Majesties Privy Council betwixt and the first of March next One thousand six hundred eighty two and thereafter in any other Courts whereof they are Judges or Members the first time they shall sit or exerce in any of these respective Courts AND ORDAINS that all who shall hereafter be promoted to or imployed in any of the foresaids Offices Trusts or Imployments shall at their entry into and before their exercing thereof take and subscribe the said Oath in manner foresaid to be recorded in the Registers of the respective Courts and reported to His Majesties Privy Council within the space of forty dayes after their taking the same And if any shall presume to exercise any of the saids Offices or Imployments or any publick Office or Trust within this Kingdom the King 's lawful Brothers and Sons only excepted until they take the Oath foresaid and subscribe it to be recorded in the Registers of the respective Courts They shall be declared incapable of all publick Trust thereafter and be further punished with the loss of their Moveables and Liferent-Escheat the one half whereof to be given to the Informer and the other half to belong to His Majesty And His Majesty with Advice foresaid recommends to His Privy Council to see this Act put to due and vigorous Execution Follows the Tenour of the OATH to be taken by all Persons in Publick Trust. I A. B. Solemnly swear in presence of the Eternal God whom I invocat as Judge and Witness of my sincere intention of this my Oath That I own and sincerely profess the true Protestant Religion contained in the Confession of Faith recorded in the first Parliament of King James the Sixth and that I believe the same to be founded on and agreeable to the Written Word of God And I promise and swear that I shall adhere thereto during all the dayes of my lifetime and shall endeavour to educat my Children therein and shall never consent to any change or alteration contrary thereto And that I disown and renounce all such Principles Doctrines or Practises whether Popish or Phanatical which are contrary unto and inconsistent with the said Protestant Religion and Confession of Faith And for testification of my Obedience to my most Gracious Soveraign CHARLES the Second I do affirm and swear by this my solemn Oath That the King's Majesty is the only Supreme Governour of this Realm over all Persons and in all Causes as well Ecclesiastical as Civil And that no forraign Prince Person Pope Prelate State or Potentat hath or ought to have any Jurisdiction Power Superioritie Preheminencie or Authoritie Ecclesiastical or Civil within this Realm And therefore I do utterly renounce and forsake all Forraign Jurisdictions Powers Superiorities and Authorities And do promise that from henceforth I shall bear Faith and true Allegiance to the King's Majesty His Heirs and Lawful Successours And to my Power shall assist and defend all Rights Jurisdictions Prerogatives Priviledges Prehemineneies and Authorities belonging to the King's Majesty His Heirs and Lawful Successours And I farther affirm and swear by this my solemn Oath That I Judge it unlawful for Subjects upon pretence of Reformation or any other pretence whatsoever To enter into Covenants or Leagues or to convocat conveen or assemble in any Councils Conventions or Assemblies to treat consult or determine in any matter of State Civil or Ecclesiastick without His Majestie 's special command or express licence had thereto or to take up arms against the King or those commissionated by Him And that I shall never so rise in Arms or enter into such Covenant or Assemblies And that there lies no Obligation on me from the National Covenant or the Solemn League and Covenant so commonly called or any other manner of way whatsoever to endeavour any change or alteration in the Government either in Church or State as it is now established by the Laws of this Kingdom And I promise and swear that I shall with my utmost power defend assist and maintain His Majestie 's Jurisdiction foresaid against all deadly And I shall never decline His Majestie 's Power and Jurisdictions As I shall answer to God And finally I affirm and swear that this my solemn Oath is given in the plain genuine sense and meaning of the words without any equivocation mental reservation or any manner of evasion whatsoever And that I shall not accept or use any dispensation from any Creature whatsoever So help me God FINIS THere are several Treatises of the same Right Reverend Author written upon several occasions concerning the Church of Rome and most of the Doctrines in Controversie betwixt us Printed for Joanna Brome * April 3. 1683. He might have referr'd them to himself pag. 460. where he gives the same
them Laws by giving them an obliging power The King alone our Lawmaker Dr. Sandersons judgment in the case His Commendation for an excellent Casuist 1 Ep. Tim. Cap. 4. v. 3. The design of Mr. B. 's Holy Common-wealth He intitles the Vsurpers to the whole Soveraignty By the King 's having lost his part Vid. H. C. Thes. 145. 363. Thes. 368. And this too against a Thesis of his own Thes. 374. Mr. B. 's Thesis further examined Who in Mr. B. 's account the best Governours in all the World See the Preface to the Holy Common-wealth Whom yet he owns to be Intruders and Vsurpers II. C. p. 86. Thesis 375. His strange shuffling and self-contradiction A short account of those Vsurpers Mr. B. 's flattery to Oliver His compliance with Richard Three Remarks upon it His Eulogy of the Vsurpers * Pref. to Holy Com. W. Mr. B. rebuked for his Extravagance and his best Governors challeng'd All that slaid and sate in Parliament not censured The Recapitulation of the Legislative power being only in the King An Objection Mr. B. 's opinion that a Soveraign though limited by compact may act for the Peoples safety against their consent And why not make Laws then for that end without their consent His reason for that opinion v. p. 119. Thes. 120. The Answer according to that Opinion Ship-Money justified upon Mr. B. 's grounds The Bishop's own answer Though Laws are not made without the Peoples consent in Parliament yet that consent doth not make them Laws Ordinances of themselves not Laws The King's Assent gives being to the Laws How the two Houses concur to the making of Laws The matter of the Laws from the Parliament the Form from the King Why the Laws said to be enacted by King Lords Commons The Modern stile of enacting Laws H. C. p. 46â— The Antient stile or form When the change began The Old stile resumed afterward Mr. B. 's Argument for the Legislative power in the Parliament from the Preface of our Laws unconclusive Holy Com. p. 462. All the Ancient and several Modern Instances against him Why Henry the VIII changed the Old stile His meaning in it could not be to part with any of his Soveraignty Nor was it so understood by either King or Parliament Most likely it was to please the People Why the Old stile resumed since An Objection Those words And by the Authority of the same when added and why The Answer By Parliament here meant not Lords Commons only without the King What meant by the Authority of the same The Parliament the King 's great Council and High Court. Their Authority from the King They act in that respect as other Courts do Why our Laws called the King's Laws Why called Acts of Parliament Advice or consent sometimes intitles to the Act. 1 Cor. 6. 2. Matth. 19. 28. Joh. 5. 22. The Saints judging the World applied to this case The difference in the Case The four Causes of our Laws viz. Efficient Matter Form and End of them explain'd What kind of Cause the Consent of the two Houses is The Legislative power and the Soveraignty in the King only Two Conclusions of Mr. B. 's upon his supposition of the Soveraignty divided The Eastern Monarchs not altogether Arbitrary What it is denominates a Monarchy No Judicatory above the King The Parliament no such Judicatory The King can do no wrong how meant Another Maxime to that purpose King David accountable to God alone and punished by him David 's Monition to Kings The Peoples priviledge of consenting to their Laws a favour at first of the Kings William the Conqueror made Laws without their consent Parliament first so called in Henry I. time An antecedent compact of the People with the King a political whimsie of Mr. B ' s. Mr. Hobbs and Mr. Baxter agree The extreme unlikelihood of the supposition Our Government at first arbitrary T is likely the Custom of not making Laws without the Peoples consent began under Henry I. with that other of not raising Mony without their consent However it was it was not by Compact but by Grant Mr. B. 's vain and false distinction of two capacities in the People as Free and as Subjects H. C. p. 459. H. C. p. 458. Some Rights he saith reserved by the People in their Contract and the Parliament their Trustees Government not alway founded upon Contract as Mr. B. saith it is A free People as well as a free Man may give up themselves to be govern'd without any reservation of Rights Several free People have done so Grotius de jure Belli ac pacis Particularly in our Government no such thing as Contract or Reservation off Rights The Peoples Rights not by bargain but by Grants of their Kings The People had no Representatives till Henry I. Vid. Daniel's Hist. Baker's Chron. Mr. B. 's supposition a meer fiction The Priviledges and Representatives the People now have are not by any antecedent Compact The Peoples being represented in a double capacity as Mr. B. fancies made an Argument by him to justifie the late Rebellion Holy Com. W. H. C. Thes. 361. The King's Coronation Oath doth not prove any such compact or Reserves c. as Mr. B. affirms This made out in three Considerations Mr. B. makes the King a King in name only He hath no authentick Record for such a Contract as he supposeth Holy Com. W. p. 377. H. C. p. 468. Nor for the Parliaments being the Peoples Trustees for their reserved Rights Were the Original constitution such as Mr. B. makes it the King would not be sole Soveraign nor Soveraign at all A brief account of the Government and its changes during the Vsurpation till the Kings Return A serious Expostulation with people for their uneasiness Numb c. 14. v. 4. No reason for it The pretended ground of it The ill effect of causless fears The Constitution of our Government The Subjects Rights and Priviledges Their representatives in Parliament The duty of those Representatives How to act as Trustees also An even Balance to be kept betwixt Prerogative and Priviledge The King compared to a Father and a Husband Two observations of Grotius De jure Belli Pacis cap. 3. p. 81. lb. p. 83. Applied to Mr. B's main principle How it came that Laws are not to be made without a Parliament When our Monarchy began to be Political Yet still a Monarchy A mistake in Polybius Grotius de jure Belli pacis lib. 1. cap. 3. Sect. 19. We are to judge of a Government not by the Managery but by the Soveraignty of it Ib. This Rule applied to the English Monarchy The happy condition of English Subjects An Account of a Sermon the Bishop preacht before the Long Parliament in commendation of the English constitution both in Church and State The reason why this Account given Church and State both subject to the Monarchy Popery and Presbytery both destructive to Monarchy Two Supremes in one Kingdom
all others besides themselves are to be excluded from Governing or chusing of Governours And amongst the ungodly that are to be thus excluded he reckons all those that will not hearken to their Pastours he means the Presbyterian Classis or that are despisers of the Lord's-Day that is all such as are not Sabbatarians or will not keep the Lord's day after the Jewish manner which they prescribe and which is condemned for Judaism by all even of the Presbyterian perswasion in the world but those of England and Scotland onely XV. If a People that by Oath and Duty are obliged to a Sovereign shall sinfully dispossess him and contrary to their Covenants chuse and Covenant with another they may be obliged by their latter Covenant notwithstanding their former and particular subjects that consented not in the breaking of their former Covenants may yet be obliged by occasion of their latter choice to the person whom they chuse Thes. 181. XVI If a Nation injuriously deprive themselves of a worthy Prince the hurt will be their own and they punish themselves but if it be necessarily to their welfare it is no injury to him But a King that by war will seek reparations from the body of the people doth put himself into an hostile State and tells them actually that he looks to his own good more than theirs and bids them take him for their Enemy and so defend themselves if they can Pag. 424. XVII Though a Nation wrong their King and so quoad Meritum causoe they are on the worser side yet may he not lawfully war against the publick good on that account nor any help him in such a war because propter fiuem he hath the worser cause Thes. 352. And yet as he tells us pag 476. we were to believe the Parliaments Declarations and professions which they made that the war which they raised was not against the King either in respect of his Authority or of his Person but onely against Delinquent Subjects and yet they actually fought against the King in person and we are to believe saith Mr. Baxter pag. 422. that men would kill them whom they fight against Mr. Baxter's Doctrine concerning the Government of England in particular HE denies the Government of England to be Monarchical in these words I. The real Sovereignty here amongst us was in King Lords and Commons Pag. 72. II. As to them that argue from the Oath of Supremacy and the title given the King I refer them saith Mr. Baxter to Mr. Lawson's answer to Hobbs's Politicks where he sheweth that the Title is often given to the single Person for the honour of the Commonwealth and his encouragement because he hath an eminent interest but will not prove the whole Sovereignty to be in him and the Oath excludeth all others from without not those whose interest is implied as conjunct with his The eminent dignity and interest of the King above others allowed the name of a Monarchy or Kingdom to the Commonwealth though indeed the Sovereignty was mixed in the hands of the Lords and Commons Pag. 88. III. He calls it a false supposition 1. That the Sovereign power was onely in the King and so that it was an absolute Monarchy 2 That the Parliament had but onely the proposing of Laws and that they were Enacted onely by the King's Authority upon their request 3. That the power of Arms and of War and Peace was in the King alone And therefore saith he those that argue from these false suppositions conclude that the Parliament being Subjects may not take up Arms without him and that it is Rebellion to resist him and most of this they gather from the Oath of Supremacy and from the Parliaments calling of themselves his Subjects but their grounds saith he are sandy and their superstructure false Pag. 459 460. And therefore Mr. Baxter tells us that though the Parliament are Subjects in one capacity yet have they their part in the Sovereignty also in their higher capacity Ibid. And upon this false and traitorous supposition he endeavours to justifie the late Rebellion and his own more than ordinary activeness in it For IV. Where the Sovereignty saith he is distributed into several hands as the King 's and Parliaments and the King invades the others part they may lawfully defend their own by war and the Subject lawfully assist them yea though the power of the Militia be expresly given to the King unless it be also exprest that it shall not be in the other Thes. 363. The conclusion saith he needs no proof because Sovereignty as such hath the power of Arms and of the Laws themselves The Law that saith the King shall have the Militia supposeth it to be against Enemies and not against the Commonwealth nor them that have part of the Sovereignty with him To resist him here is not to resist power but usurpation and private will in such a case the Parliament is no more to be resisted than he Ibid. V. If the King raise War against such a Parliament upon their Declaration of the dangers of the Common-wealth the people are to take it as raised against the Commonwealth Thes. 358. And in that case saith he the King may not onely be resisted but ceaseth to be a King and entreth into a state of War with the people Thes. 368. VI. Again if a Prince that hath not the whole Sovereignty be conquered by a Senate that hath the other part and that in a just defensive War that Senate cannot assume the whole Sovereignty but supposeth that government in specie to remain and therefore another King must be chosen if the former be incapable Thes. 374. as he tells us he is by ceasing to be King in the immediately precedent Thes. VII And yet in the Preface to this Book he tells us that the King withdrawing so he calls the murthering of one King and the casting off of another the Lords and Commons ruled alone was not this to change the species of the Government Which in the immediate words before he had affirmed to be in King Lords and Commons which constitution saith he we were sworn and sworn and sworn again to be faithfull to and to defend And yet speaking of that Parliament which contrary to their Oaths changed this Government by ruling alone and taking upon them the Supremacy he tells us that they were the best Governours in all the world and such as it is forbidden to Subjects to depose upon pain of damnation What then was he that deposed them one would think Mr. Baxter should have called him a Traitour but he calls him in the same Preface the Lord Protector adding That he did prudently piously faithfully and to his immortal honour exercise the Government which he left to his Son to whom as Mr. Baxter saith pag. 484. he is bound to submit as set over us by God and to obey for conscience sake and to behave himself as a Loyal Subject towards him
of all men living Mr. Baxter should reproach us so frequently so loudly and so groundlesly as he does with what he knows himself and his party may most justly and undeniably be reproached with unless he thinks the calling of an honest Woman Whore first will make her that calls her so to be thought an honest Woman And indeed men are apt to believe that one would not for shame accuse another of what he knows himself to be more guilty but experience proves the contrary And I hope I have proved it too partly by confirming my Charge against Mr. Baxter and partly by confuting his Calumny against me But the truth is when Mr. Baxter is in his fit of raving against Bishops and the Episcopal party he cares not whether what he saith be true or false pertinent or impertinent so it be virulent and scandalous enough having amongst many other of their speculative and practical Maxims learned of the Popish Puritans the Jesuits calumniari audacter to charge boldly as hoping that aliquid hoerebit something will stick though it be never so improbable or incredible at least that those of their own Party will believe any thing of or against us which is perhaps all they care for of which practice that Mr. Baxter is often and very much guilty in his treating of me I have given some Instances already and shall give more hereafter CHAP. XIII The Charge of the forementioned Assertion renewed and made good against Mr. B. notwithstanding that late Treatise of his which he pretends was purposely written in answer to it IF it be objected that I have said nothing yet in answer to the Creatise which Mr. Baxter saith he writ on purpose to prove my Charge against him to be a gross mistake I confess I have not because in truth I do not see how I am concerned in it or how any thing I charge Mr. Baxter withall is disproved or so much as offered to be disproved by it Insomuch that as I said before if Mr. Baxter had set out that Treatise by it self and had not in the Preface to another of his Treatises told me himself it was purposely written against me I should not have taken any notice of it at all neither do I yet after the reading of it over and over again and again see any reason why I should put my self to the trouble of writing or any body else to the trouble of reading any thing in reply to it because if all and every one of his sixty three Metaphysical Propositions of which that Treatise of his doth consist were all of them so many Mathematical Demonstrations as perhaps he thinks they are yet my Charge of Mr. Baxter would still stand in full force against him being not so much as touched much less overthrown by any of those Propositions For what was that I charged Mr. Baxter withall was it not this That he at the Conference in the Savoy denyed the command of a thing lawfull in it self and commanded by lawfull authority to be a lawfull command if by accident it might be the cause or occasion of Sin Yes will Mr. Baxter say but then by accident I meant not every accident but such an accident as the Commander might and ought to prevent as for example the commanding it under an unjust penalty for that he will have to be an accident or the commanding of it though the Commander knows or foresees it will by accident be the cause or occasion of some such evil or mischief as he can and ought to provide against And in the one or the other of these two notions of an accident would Mr. Baxter have his Assertion of the unlawfulness of a Command of a lawfull thing by lawfull Authority if by accident it may be the occasion of Sin to be understood and I cannot blame him for Secundoe cogitationes sunt meliores Second thoughts are likely wiser and better than the first But that he did not then by such an accident as made a lawfull command unlawfull mean an accident in either of those notions is evident by his frequently and finally denying the command of a thing lawfull in it self to be lawfull if by accident it may be the cause of Sin though it be not injoyned under an unjust penalty and though the accidental evil or mischief it may be cause or occasion of be such as the Commander either cannot or ought not to provide against Now he that denies such a command as this to be lawfull or which is all one asserts such a command as this to be unlawfull because by accident it may be the cause of Sin cannot either Grammatically or Logically be understood to mean such an accident or accidental Sin as the Commander ought to provide against and consequently if he mean any thing he must needs mean such an accident or accidental evil as not the Commanding but the Commanded party is to answer for And therefore as I said then so I say now That to assert the lawfull command of a lawfull thing to be unlawfull upon such an account or because it may by such an accident as Mr. Baxter must needs be understood to mean be the cause or occasion of Sin is destructive of all Legislative power Divine as well as Humane And therefore Bishop Morley was not grosly mistaken either in charging Mr. Baxter with such an assertion or in charging such an assertion with such impious and pernicious consequences as he affirms and I confess I did But Mr. Baxter doth grosly abuse me and his Reader too by substituting a true Assertion instead of a false one for himself and a false one instead of a true one for the Bishop and his party As if that which he asserted was The unlawfulness of the command of a lawfull thing if either it were commanded under an unjust penalty or the Commander of it did foresee it would be the cause of some such great evil or sin as he was obliged to prevent and that which we had asserted was The lawfulness of a Command of a thing lawfull in it self though it were commanded under never so unjust a penalty or though the Commander of it foresaw it would be the cause of such an evil or mischief as he might and ought to prevent And as to make the latter of these two Assertions to be believed to be ours he brings in the aforesaid Suppositions and fraudulent instances of selling of poyson c. So to make the former to be believed to have been his Assertion then he asserts that and none but that now hoping his friendly or unwary Readers will believe it was the very same which he asserted then And this indeed he might have reason to hope for from his Friends at Kidderminster who he knew would believe whatsoever he told them to be as he said it was especially telling it them in print and before there was any thing in print to the contrary but
will not conform but the Parliament That is the King with the consent of Lords and Commons and not the Bishops who doe nothing but in obedience to those Laws are the Men whom Mr. Baxter if he speaks properly as he would be thought to do always must needs mean by the men of confounding Practices which how he will justifie if he be called in question for it he were best to consider But as for the men of confused Conceptions and such as could not be reconciled to distinctness and congruity of speech I doubt not but he meant Me for one as I doubt not neither but he meant me for one of the men of confounding Practices also but as he meant more besides my self when he speaks of men of confounding Practices so he must do also when he speaks of men of confus'd Conceptions because he speaks of men in the plural number speaking of both the sorts of them and therefore by the men of confused Conceptions though he may and I believe doth mean me for one yet he must needs mean those that disputed with him as well as me and rather them than me or any other of the Bishops that were there for the Disputants on our part were they that he and his Assistants had to deal with And they were men that I dare say were never thought by any but Mr. Baxter to be men of such confus'd Conceptions and so irreconcileable to distinctness and congruity of speech that is so utterly without Logick or Grammar as he would have them thought to be I am sure the University of Cambridge did not think them to be so when two of them were made the Primary Professours of Theology in that famous University Neither did the King think them to be so when he made all three of them Bishops nor did We that were then Bishops think them to be so when we made choice of them to be ours and the Churches Advocates in a Cause of so high concernment as that was But Mr. Baxter having been so shamefully nonpluss'd as he was at that Disputation would have it to be believed by those that were not there that he had or should have had much the better of it if the men he had to deal with had not been men of such confus'd Conceptions that they could not understand his meaning by his words or of such impatience for that 's part of his character of them also that they would not give him leave to explain himself more fully than he did This might have had some colour of reason in it if the Conference betwixt our and their Disputants had been oral or by word of mouth which is always indeed lyable to heat and eagerness and impatience and misunderstanding of one another whilst they are arguing as likewise to misreporting afterwards of what was said of either side But this Conference was by writing to prevent jangling and all other the aforesaid inconveniences which oral interlocutory Disputes are subject to as likewise that each party might have time to consider what they were to stick to and abide by before they writ it down and to peruse it afterwards and if need were to alter or amend any thing they saw amiss in it before they delivered it to those that were to answer or reply to it And thus were our Arguments delivered unto them by us and thus were their Answers to our Arguments delivered unto us by them all of them written with Mr. Baxter's own hand who seem'd to be the Dominus factotum The Ruler of the Roast in the business The Arguments and the Answers that were written down and interchangeably delivered from one Party to the other were the very same in terminis which I have before recited and which are attested by the subscriptions of the aforesaid witnesses printed above 20 years since and now again reprinted with the Letter whereunto they were first annexed which Attestation together with the Arguments and Answers which are attested I desire the Reader seriously and impartially to peruse and consider and then to judge whether the men Mr. Baxter had to deal with were Men of such confus'd Conceptions and so irreconcileable to distinctness and congruity of speech as he would have them thought to be or whether indeed he himself were not evidently and inextricably confus'd puzzled and perplexed in his Answers to their Arguments especially when he gave his final Answer to their last Syllogisme the Major Proposition whereof I am confident would never have been denied by either of his Assistants had not he being such a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Lover of preheminence such a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so contentious and self-will'd as he is overruled them both For who not blinded with prejudice or transported with passion as Master Baxter often is and as it seems then was would have denied as he did the truth of this Proposition viz. That Command which commandeth an act in it self lawfull and no other act whereby any unjust penalty is enjoyned nor any circumstance whence directly or per accidens any sin is consequent which the Commander ought to provide against hath in it all things requisite to the lawfulness of a Command and particularly cannot be guilty of commanding an Act per accidens unlawfull nor of commanding an act under an unjust penalty This this I say was the Proposition which Mr. Baxter did in Writing with his own hand finally deny to be true and this is that which I charge him withall and from which as I then told him it necessarily follows that no Law either humane or Divine can be lawfull because there is no Law of either sort but may by some accident or other be the cause or occasion of sin For example Preaching and Fasting and Praying and Thanksgiving are all of them God's holy Ordinances but may not any nay all of these Ordinances of God himself be by accident the occasion of sin nay were not all of them so in a very high degree in the late Times being made use of in their several seasons to stir up and encourage the People to rebell against their Sovereign and to plunder and murther their fellow Subjects But did this make God's commanding all or any of these holy Ordinances to be unlawfull by Master Baxter's Logick it must do so because by accident they were the cause or occasion of very many and very great sins and such sins as the Commander foresaw they would be the occasion of and might have prevented if he would by suffering no ill use to be made of them which is more than any humane Lawgiver can doe and yet he did not nor would not prevent those accidental evils either by forbearing to make such Laws as he knew would be the occasion of sin or by repealing or altering or dispensing with them after they were made or by remitting and not inflicting the punishment that was due
true one instead of a false one you may observe Mr. Baxter's sincerity and ingenuity so by his shuffling in of this rather than of any other into the place of that which was in question you may observe his excessive charity towards me and those of my Order For designing to make a Bishop and especially Bishop Morley for so he is always pleased to call me not honoris gratiâ For honour's sake you may be sure when by name he speaks of me as odious as he could to all mankind what more probable or to the Sectaries more plausible a Medium could he have devised to make use of to that End than first to shuffle in this Proposition All humane Powers are limited by God and then to make me the denier of it and finally thereupon to pronounce me a defier of Deity and Humanity Lastly you may observe likewise his wonderfull skill in the art of reasoning and the Transubstantiating power of his Logick by which he will needs infer from my maintaining there may be a lawfull unlimited Monarchy I do therefore deny all humane Powers are limited by God O the weight of a Straw when it is turned into a Club and weilded by such a Hercules For what doth all this signifie but that he had rather bely himself than not slander me and that he had rather contradict and condemn himself than not say something to make a Bishop and especially Bishop Morley to be thought to be an Atheist and a Blasphemer not animadverting perhaps that the fiery darts which he slung at the Bishop might with much more force be retorted against himself for aliquando bonus dormitat Homerus Sometimes honest Homer is caught napping or as we say It is a good horse that never stumbles and Malice sometimes is blind as well as Love By this time I think it is evident enough according to Mr. Baxter's own way of reasoning that either he himself is a defier of Deity and Humanity or Bishop Morley is not And God forbid that by any concluding argument either of us should be proved to be so But now this bold and groundless Calumny from which for the honour of my Order as being a Bishop as well as for my personal reputation as I am a Christian I was bound in the first place to vindicate my self being removed out of the way it is high time to come to the consideration of that which was or ought to have been the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the main Question or the onely subject matter of debate betwixt Mr. Baxter and me in relation to this Aphorism namely whether I had reason to set down this in the Catalogue of those Aphorisms I excepted against either as false and erroneous or as dangerous and seditious and I confess I set it down both as false and erroneous and as dangerous and seditious also which I am now to prove it is CHAP. III. The Aphorism aforesaid proved to be False from the account of Paternal Government and ancient Monarchy Governours not therefore Tyrants because Vnlimited ANd that we may not any longer Andabatarum more pugnare Fight blindfold or in the dark as Mr. Baxter loves to doe without discovering or discerning what that is which is affirmed by one or denied by the other I will once more repeat the Aphorism it self which is This. Of Governours some are limited some de facto unlimited the unlimited are Tyrants and have no right to their unlimited Governments This is Mr. Baxter's Aphorism in terminis and this I confess is one and the first of those Aphorisms of his which I think are all of them nigro signanda lapillo To be marked with a black cole as being all of them I mean all that I have specified not onely false and erroneous but as I said before dangerous and seditious also And I put this Aphorism of his in the first place because it is the most general as speaking of all Governours Sovereign as well as Subordinate lawfull and unlawfull limited and unlimited and pronounceth all the Unlimited without exception to be Tyrants and to have no Right to their unlimited Governments 2. I put it in the first place because Mr. Baxter seems to have laid it as the Foundation or Corner-stone upon which he superstructs all that follows not in my Collection onely but in that whole Book of his Holy Common-wealth as he calls it from Page 106 to Page 490. that is to the end of the Book Upon this foundation I say all his several discourses that follow in that whole Book are superstructed As 1. That Of the objective or material differences of Government 2. That Of the efficient and conveying Causes of Power 3. That Of the happiest Commonwealth and best form of Government 4. How a Commonwealth may best be reduced to a Theocratical temper 5. Of the Sovereigns Power over the Pastours of the Church 6. Of the Sovereigns Prerogatives and Power governing by Law and Judgments 7. Of due Obedience to Rulers and of Resistance 8. And lastly Of the late War for so he calls the late horrid Rebellion for the justifying whereof as this Aphorism is laid as the foundation so all the aforesaid discourses that are built upon it are especially and finally designed and intended but most especially two ofthem I mean that Of the efficient and conveying Causes of Power and that Of due Obedience to Rulers and of Resistance These I say are the reasons why I put this before all the rest of his Aphorisms which I except against in my Collection And this I except against first as considered in it self without relating to Us or to our Governours either Civil or Ecclesiastical and so considered I say it is false and erroneous and secondly I except against it also as it may be considered and as I verily believe it was intended with a respect to our Government here in England and so considered I say it is dangerous and seditious First then I say that what Mr. Baxter affirms in this Aphorism namely that Governours de facto unlimited are Tyrants and have no right to their unlimited Government is false and erroneous considered in it self as it is set down in general terms without relation or application to any particular species or form of Government For proof whereof and in order thereunto I will presume to take for granted 1. That by Governours of whom he saith some are limited and some are unlimited he means Sovereign or Supreme Governours Subordinate Governours being all limited by the Supreme and therefore none of them unlimited 2. That by limited and unlimited is meant limited and unlimited by Men there being no such thing as any Governour how great or absolute soever that can be said either de jure or de facto to be unlimited by God as I have already proved And therefore 3dly I shall take it for granted also that by his de facto unlimited Governours he
unlimitedly as ever any of the Assyrian or Persian or Roman Emperours did heretofore or as the Turk or great Mogul now do And so may any unlimited Monarch doe and yet be neither an Usurper nor an unjust Governour nor consequently be a Tyrant in either of the true notions of a Tyrant as Cromwell was in both for as in the Monarchies before named and in all other Kingdoms in all parts of the World the Succession of Princes one unto another was Hereditary generally at least and I think I may say universally till oflate and consequently They cannot all of them be said to have been Usurpers or Tyrants by Vsurpation so many of them have been Just and Wise and Temperate and every way most excellent Princes and so beloved by their Subjects while they lived that they were Deified and adored by them after they were dead and consequently they were not all of them Tyrants in the Exercise of their Governments though they were unlimited by any antecedent Pact Covenant or Constitution betwixt them and their Subjects which is enough to prove that all de facto unlimited Governours are not Tyrants and consequently to prove this Aphorism of Mr. Baxter's which affirms they are so to be false Neither if it could prove them to be Tyrants Exercitio that is to govern Tyrannically would that prove them to have no Right to their Government supposing them to be no Usurpers CHAP. IV. No obligation from any Law either of God or Nature or Nations that all Governours should be limited by the People Conquerours in a just War have an Vnlimited right and for the people conquered after submission to rise up against them is Rebellion BUt Mr. Baxter perhaps will reply All of them are therefore Vsurpers because they are unlimited as indeed he seems to insinuate by annexing de facto to unlimited as if de jure all Governours ought to be limited in their governing by antecedent Covenants and Compacts betwixt those that are to govern and those that are to be governed by them and therefore those Governours that are not so limited or precontracted with are Tyrants and such Tyrants as have no right to govern because de jure by right they ought to be limited or precontracted with And this I do verily believe to be Mr. Baxter's genuine sense and meaning in this Aphorism and he that reads what he writes afterwards especially in his Aphorisms and discourses of the Causes of Conveying power and of Obedience and Resistance will I am confident be of my mind as to this particular Now if the reason why he doth so magisterially pronounce all those Governours that are de facto Vnlimited to be Tyrants and to have no right to their Governments be because they ought de jure to be limited I mean so limited as is before declared I demand quo jure By what right or law they are obliged to be so limited Was it jure divino positivo By divine positive law or was it jure divino naturali By divine law of nature or was it jure gentium By the law of nations for one of these three it must be or else it could not be obligatory to all Governours and all Nations that are to be Governed by them But first it was not jure divino positivo By divine positive law For where or in what place of God's word either of the new or old Testament do we reade any positive command of God that the Kings or Governours of all Nations or of any Nation should be antecedently limited by Pacts or Covenants agreed upon betwixt them and the People over whom they were to reign before they could have any just Right or Title to governor reign over them I am sure the Kings of Israel though they were limited by God not as Men onely and as all other Kings are but as Kings or in the execution of their Kingly Office and that jure positivo By positive law as well as jure naturali morali By natural and moral law yet they were never limited by the people either antecedenter or consequenter neither à parte ante nor à parte post nor was there any command of God or so much as any intimation from God that they should be so Again as such limitation of Governours by the People is not de jure divino positivo By any positive law of God there being no positive Command in God's word for it so it is not de jure divino naturali By the law of nature neither for then it would have been de facto likewise at first as well as afterwards and in all places as well as in some especially in such places where there are no other rules or Laws for the People to live by but the dictates of Nature onely as in all inhabited places of the lately discovered New world where we find no other Government but by Kings or Monarchs no nor other Kings or Supreme Governours but such as are unlimited Lastly as such a limitation of Kings or Supreme Governours by the People is neither de jure positivo nor naturali Neither by any positive law nor by the law of nature so it is not de jure Gentium By the law of Nations neither For nothing is de jure Gentium By the law of Nations but that wherein the interest of all Nations is concerned as freedom of Trade and Commerce the inviolableness of the Persons of Ambassadours c. but how is the interest of all other Nations concerned in this or that particular Nation 's being governed by a limited or unlimited Prince or Governour and supposing the first Kings or Sovereigns to have been unlimited as Justine and all other Historians tell us they were and as in all probability they were indeed in the first plantation of the World and supposing too their unlimited Governments to have been Hereditary as all History Humane and Divine do testify also I would fain know how the Heirs and Successours of such unlimited Princes could come to be limited It could not be upon the account of a conditional Election for an Election cannot be but into a place that is void but in an Hereditary Kingdom there is never any vacancy because in an Hereditary Kingdom The King never dies though the man who was King doth for immediately assoon as the Father ceaseth the Son or next Heir begins to be King and to be King as his Father was that is an unlimited Sovereign as his Father was and so from generation to generation And then Mr. Baxter must grant that the Hereditary Successours of unlimited Governours may have a Right to their unlimited Governments and such a right as their Subjects cannot deprive them of without such a Governour 's own consent nor he deprive his Heirs of the same right by his consenting to the limitation or lessening of it unless they and every one of them consent to it also Or else he must prove
it seems by the Prophet Jeremy's sad bewailing of it in his Book of Lamentations And as the Prophet Jeremy declares the Effects so the Prophet Ezekiel declares the Causes of this their miserable condition namely their Perjury breaking the Oath of Allegeance they had taken and their revolting from their obedience they had sworn to the King of Babylon who had conquered them and forced them to submit to his unlimited power in Government of them which if it had been unlawfull for them to obey God would not have suffered them to be punished as they were for endeavouring as they did to free themselves from it at least he would not have called that endeavour of theirs a Rebellion and specified it as the main cause for which they were so punished And it is very observable that though God had promised to free them from that yoke which first the Assyrians had laid upon them and afterwards the Persian Monarchs did keep them under yet when after their seventy years Captivity was accomplished and the prefixed time of their deliverance was come as the Text tells us Daniel knew by Books namely by what he had read in the former Prophets it was God would not suffer them so much as to endeavour to deliver themselves by strong hand or by rising up in Arms against their unlimited Sovereign as no doubt he could have done if he would but he put into the heart first of Cyrus and afterwards of Artaxerxes Kings of Persia then their Masters and unlimited Sovereigns not onely to give them leave to return into their own Countrey but abundantly to furnish them with Money and Materials of all sorts for the rebuilding of the Temple and City of Jerusalem as is recorded at large in the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah And like unto this was their former Deliverance out of the land of Egypt out of the house of bondage from whence after a long and grievous slavery they were brought out by a strong hand indeed but not by a strong hand of their own for as they never attempted any thing against the arbitrary unlimited Government they lived under during their very long and very cruel slavery in Egypt so when at last they went out of it they went not out without Pharaoh's leave to doe so though there were above Six hundred thousand fighting Men amongst them a number sufficient to have made their way by force against all the Power Pharaoh could have raised to hinder it but God would not give them courage or suffer them to doe so to the end that there might be no countenance or colour for Rebellion against even the most unjust and injurious and tyrannical Sovereign Powers to be found upon record in his Word as allowed by him in his own People to justifie or encourage any other people or persons upon any pretence to rebell against their Sovereigns whether limited or unlimited nay whether they were no Tyrants or Tyrants so they were not Vsurpers and consequently Rebels themselves against their rightfull Sovereign For as I have already proved that all unlimited Governours are not Tyrants because they are unlimited so I am now to prove that all Tyrants do not lose their right to their Government because they are Tyrants or because they govern tyrannically still supposing them to be no Usurpers CHAP. V. That lawfull Governours by being Tyrants do not forfeit their Right to their Government proved from Scripture both Negatively and Affirmatively NOw what or whom Mr. Baxter himself doth mean by Tyrants here in this place it is plain and evident from what he saith Page 86. of his Political Aphorisms where distinguishing betwixt an Vsurper and a Tyrant he tells us that An Vsurper is he that wants a Title and A Tyrant is one that doth abuse it or useth it not as he ought to use it that is saith he for the common good So that in his Notion of a Tyrant he that hath never so just a Title to the Government if he govern not as he ought to govern is a Tyrant and if he be a Tyrant he hath no Right saith he unto his Government whether it be limited or unlimited No saith Mr. Baxter I do not say he hath no right to his Government but that he hath no right to his unlimited Government whereby I confess I know not what he means unless it be this that an unlimited Governour is not a Governour but a Tyrant and that he hath no right to his unlimited Government because there ought to be no such Government But then again what will become of his division of Governours and consequently of Governments also into some that are limited and some that are unlimited If he reply that though de facto As to matter of fact there be some Governours and Governments that are unlimited yet de jure As to matter of right they ought all of them to be limited and consequently no man can have a right to an unlimited Government because a Government that is unlimited is no rightfull Government If this be his meaning it is but petitio Principii A begging of that which is in question nay of that which I think I have put out of question already by the Instances I have given 1 of Paternal Government in the Old World before the Floud 2. Of the first Monarchs in the New World after the Floud 3. Of all Conquerours over those whom they have conquered in a just War who were all of them unlimited Governours by any humane Constitution and that not de facto As in fact onely but de jure In right also there being no positive law of God nor no humane antecedent Pact or Constitution to the contrary Such likewise were the Roman Emperours and yet their Right and Title to their unlimited Government was never question'd either by Christ himself or by any of the Primitive Christians who were his first and best disciples So that there is no more to be said to prove that it is not the Governour 's I mean the Sovereign or Supreme Governour 's being unlimited that can make him to have no right to his unlimited Government Neither need there to be much said to prove that it is not the lawfull Governour 's being a Tyrant whether he be limited or unlimited that can make him lose or forfeit the right he had or hath unto his Government so as to free his Subjects from their obligation of obedience to him or warrant their taking up of Arms or rebelling against him and consequently to depose him and put him to death for upon the same ground and by the same reason the former may be done the latter may be done also So that the Presbyterians are no more excusable from being our late blessed King's murtherers than the Independents the latter inferring the Conclusion from the Premisses of the former But this by the way onely I proceed to the proof of what I have in hand namely
some Kings violently and wrongfully would doe and which if any of their Kings should doe as he foresaw many of them would doe all that they were to doe to help themselves was onely to cry unto God to help them and consequently that though Kings govern never so unjustly or never so contrary to God's Laws or their own as some of the Kings of Judah as well as those of Israel did yet they must not forcibly be resisted by their subjects but all that Subjects in that case can or ought to doe is to cry unto God Preces lachrymoe Prayers and tears being the onely arms the Primitive Christians did use or thought lawfull for Christians to use against such Princes And now let Mr. Baxter lay his hand upon his heart and consider who it is that in one place he calls a defier of Deity and Humanity and in another place an Enemy to God to Kings and to all mankind It is not Bishop Morley at least it is not Bishop Morley onely but Samuel the Prophet and St. Paul the Apostle and St. Peter too or rather the Holy Ghost himself that spake by them so that what was intended by Mr. Baxter as a reproach to Bishop Morley is become Blasphemy against God himself whose truth it is for the maintaining whereof Bishop Morley is so heinously reproached And therefore as St. Peter said to Ananias when Ananias thought he had lyed to St. Peter onely Thou hast not lyed unto men but unto God so might I say unto Mr. Baxter that he hath not reproached me or not me onely but the Holy Ghost himself in calling that doctrine a defiance of Deity and Humanity and an Enmity to God to Kings and to all mankind which was by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost taught by Samuel the Prophet in the Old Testament and by St. Paul and St. Peter in the New But is it possible will some say that Mr. Baxter being so sober and discreet and so meek a man as he is thought to be should publish in Print so very severe a censure against Bishop Morley or any man else that is called a Christian because and onely because he maintains that and nothing but that which was taught by Christ and his Apostles and was believed and practised by the next and best of their Disciples I answer that Mr. Baxter hath censured Bishop Morley as a defier of Deity and Humanity and as an Enemy to God to Kings and to all mankind is evident from the places before quoted out of his printed Papers and that he hath no other but the aforesaid cause for it is evident likewise from what I have now said to disprove that Calumny but the way he takes to induce his Readers to believe it is worth the observation it being the very same artificial jugling trick which I have observed him to make use of more than once before I mean his putting a false Proposition of his own instead or in the place of a true one of mine and then inferring from the false one what he knew could not be inferred from the true one he chargeth me with what he infers from it Thus by misreporting what was affirmed by us and denied by him at the Savoy-Conference he thence infers that I was grossly mistaken in the report I had made of what he said at that Conference And thus again because I had excepted against that Aphorism of his as false which affirms all unlimited Governours to be Tyrants and to have no right to their unlimited Governments He makes me say that all humane Powers are not limited by God and then infers that I am a defier of Deity and Humanity And so here likewise because I say that lawfull Sovereigns are not to be resisted by their Subjects though they be Tyrants or though they do govern otherwise than by God's or their own Laws they ought to govern he would make his Readers to believe that I justify Tyranny it self and that Kings may lawfully doe what they list to their Subjects and take away what they list from them their Lands their Houses their Wives their Children and their Lives also and all this because I say they are not to be resisted if they doe so by their Subjects And doth not St. Paul say so too when he chargeth the Christians upon pain of damnation not to resist Nero who did all these outrages and more and worse also for he caused them to be impaled with stakes thrust into their bodies up to their throats and then besmearing them all over with combustible matter set them on fire to burn like Flamboe's to give light to Passengers as they went along by night in the streets of Rome And dares Mr. Baxter say that St. Paul because he forbad his Christian Subjects to resist this monster did therefore approve all the horrible cruelties and outrageous crimes that he was guilty of or that he did thereby encourage all or any other Kings to doe as he did and consequently was an Enemy to God to Kings and to all Mankind I think he dares not and yet if this Inference of his be good against me it must from the same Premisses be good against St. Paul also for the same Premisses will always infer the same Conclusion and therefore St. Paul is or Bishop Morley is not upon this account what Mr. Baxter saith he is an Enemy to God to Kings and to all Mankind But what is Mr. Baxter then in the mean time certainly either not so good a Logician or so good a Christian as he would be thought to be I am sure he is not such a Christian as those of the Primitive times were who neither wanted courage nor force to defend themselves against the strongest as well as the cruellest of their persecuting Princes and consequently in Mr. Baxter's opinion were no better than fools or madmen to suffer so tamely and so patiently as they did not onely the loss of all they had but death it self and death with the most exquisite torments under their Pagan persecuting Princes and under some Christian heretical Princes also rather than they would transgress those Precepts of St. Paul by so much as offering to defend themselves against their Sovereigns whether Pagans or Hereticks or against those that were commissioned or impowered by them And this doctrine of the unlawfulness for Subjects to defend themselves by force against the most cruel of their most persecuting Princes was universally believed and practised for diverse hundreds of years after Christ without any one instance to the contrary but once onely and then that was when an Heretical Arian Emperour was resisted by his Heretical Novatian Subjects for whom I mean the Novatian Hereticks Mr. Baxter seems to have a very great kindness but whether upon this account I mean because they were the first Christian Subjects that ever resisted their Sovereign or because the first founder of them made himself a
Bishop in another man's Diocese as Mr. Baxter and all Baxterians would be or because they were the old 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the first Puritans or pretenders to extraordinary purity and strictness of life as Mr. Baxter and his followers now do whether I say it be upon any or all of these accounts I know not but this I know that Mr. Baxter as often as he mentions them speaks very favourably of them although they were as much as the Orthodox Christians themselves were for the Government of the Church by Bishops and by such Bishops as the Orthodox Bishops then were and as ours now are I mean Bishops of a different and Superiour Order to Presbyters and exercising Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction and authority over them And therefore there must be some particular and special reason why Mr. Baxter is so kind to them In the mean time it is observable that as They were then so are They now the greatest pretenders to strictness and severity that then took and now take unto themselves a liberty which God never gave them nay which God by his Prophets and Christ by his Apostles hath forbidden them to take I mean the taking up of Arms by Subjects against their Sovereigns though but defensive onely CHAP. XIII Sovereigns highly accountable to God The doctrine of Non-resistance to the advantage of Subjects as well as of Kings Hobbists Papists and Sectaries censured Mr. B 's Aphorism justly excepted against and the Bishop vindicated from being a Defier and an Enemy to God and Man THe contrary doctrine whereunto which we maintain might have been suspected of flattery to Kings as Mr. Baxter calls it if it had not been St. Paul's as well as ours or if because we teach that Kings are not to be resisted by their Subjects it would follow therefore that we taught likewise that such Kings as govern otherwise than by God's Laws and their own they ought to do were not accountable to any or not punishable at all for so doing Whereas Mr. Baxter knows that we of the Church of England believe and teach that Kings the greatest of Kings are as much nay more accountable to God and punishable by God either here or hereafter for whatsoever they doe amiss than the meanest of their Subjects are to them or by them and so much the rather because they are not punishable but by God onely And therefore as it would not onely be absurd but ridiculous that because a man saith the Deputy Lieutenant or Viceroy of Ireland is not to be questioned or punished by any in Ireland for what he doth amiss there therefore he is not to be questioned or punished at all or that he whose Viceroy he is namely the King of England may not or will not punish him either there or when he comes home so it is equally absurd and ridiculous to conclude as Mr. Baxter does that Bishop Morley because he holds that Kings are not accountable to or punishable by their Subjects therefore he must needs encourage them to be Tyrants as if they were not or as if Bishop Morley thought and taught they were not answerable to God and punishable by God for their Tyranny either here or hereafter and that not onely for their oppression and ill usage of their Subjects but for the dishonour they have done unto God whose Viceroys and Representatives they are and therefore should be as he is not onely just and righteous but mercifull and benign and gracious to all their Subjects Thus we Believe and thus we Teach And withall we believe and teach also That Subjects who suffer wrongfully and yet patiently under oppressing Tyrannical and persecuting Princes as the Primitive Christians did and rejoyced when they did so shall be sure to be either the sooner delivered from sufferings here or to be finally so recompensed and rewarded hereafter that they shall find to their unspeakable and endless comfort and joy that it was good for them that they were so oppressed and afflicted Thus I say do we believe and thus do we teach both Kings and Subjects and if both Kings and Subjects did believe and doe as we teach them neither would Subjects have cause to complain of their Kings nor Kings to be jealous or afraid of their Subjects More to blame therefore are they whosoever they are that teach the contrary either in relation to Kings or Subjects Such in relation to Kings are the Habbists and other the like Atheistical flatterers of Kings who would make them believe they may doe what they list without doing any injury to their Subjects and without being answerable to God for it and that either because there is no God at all or that there is no other life after this And such in relation to Subjects are the Papists the Presbyterians Independents and the rest of the Sectaries who teach it to be lawfull for Subjects when they are grieved and oppressed by their Sovereigns to such a degree or which is all one when they think themselves to be so to take up Arms against them whereby they shew themselves to be much more such as Mr. Baxter would have Bishop Morley believed to be I mean Enemies to God to Kings and to Subjects and consequently to all Mankind than Bishop Morley is 1. For first are not they Enemies to God who teach men to rebell against God and is it not rebellion against God to rebell against the Viceroy of God who because he is God's Viceroy is accountable for what he doth well or ill to none but God And therefore in this case if any God may most Emphatically say 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Vengeance is mine I will repay it belongs to me and to none but me to call mine own Viceroys to an account and to punish them when and how I think fit and therefore for Subjects to take the sword in this case is to take it or rather to wrest it out of God's hand as well as the King 's and to use it against the King is to use it against God and therefore they that take it and use it if they do not perish by the King's sword I mean the sword of War or of Justice here by bodily death they shall undoubtedly except they repent before they go hence perish by the sword of God Bodies and Souls too in the life to come 2. Are they not Enemies to Kings who teach that Kings may be resisted and deposed by their Subjects for male-administration of their Governments whether real or but imaginary and pretended onely of which the Subjects themselves are to be the Judges and consequently the best of Princes as well as the worst are to reign but precariò Upon precarious terms or durante bene placito During the good pleasure of the people 3. Are not the Teachers of this doctrine Enemies to all Subjects as well as to all Kings first by making their Kings jealous and afraid of them
it was not made against the King but against his evil Councellors and other his Delinquent Subjects only CHAP. III. Another ground of Mr. B's justifying the late War that according to our constitution the King is not sole Sovereign disproved The Act for the Rebel-Parliaments sitting censured All Kings properly so called not accountable to the People but to God only AND this doth farther appear by the little confidence he himself seems to have in this Topick For supposing as he had all the reason in the World to suppose that the aforesaid Declaration of the Parliament as he 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 abusively and falsly calls it would signifie nothing with considering and understanding men as to the justifying of the late War from being a down-right Rebellion as indeed it was he seems to quit this as an indefensible Out-work and retires to that which he thinks to be a much stronger Hold and which if he can maintain he thinks that though he should grant the late War to have been made against the King yet it was not could not be a Rebellion because it was not made by Subjects against their Sovereign For the King of England saith he according to the constitution of our Government is not our sole Sovereign but there be others that be partners with him in the Sovereignty it self and of this he is so very confident that he saith in positive and express terms that if any man can prove that the King was the highest power in the time of those Divisions He will offer his head to justice for a Rebel Which saying of his seems to require some animadversion upon it as not being an absolute denyal of the Kings Sovereignty or of the Kings being the highest Power but of his being Sovereign or highest Power during those times of division only which seems to imply that he was even in Mr. Baxters opinion the Sovereign or highest Power before those times of division And if this be his meaning as it must be if there be any meaning at all in those words then it is not from the Constitution of the Government as Mr. Baxter saith it is that the King I mean our King of England is not the Sovereign or the highest Power always and in all times and to all intents and purposes but it was from the Alteration of the essential Constitution of our Government and from the iniquity of those Times and Persons that made that alteration that the King did not nor could not then exercise those Acts of Sovereignty or Supreme Power which was as legally invested and as inseparably inherent in him even then as ever it was before For though the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Power might and was yet the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Authority was not nor could not be taken from him but by taking away his Life also Unless Mr. Baxter will say and there seems to be some such secret intimation in that saying of his I last quoted that the King himself gave away his Sovereignty or that he made his two Houses of Parliament partakers with him in it when he passed an Act for their sitting until They themselves should be willing or content to be dissolv'd I confess this was a very great alteration in the very fundamental constitution of the Government and I confess the King passed such an Act the very great streights he was then in together with the minatory importunity of the two Houses backt by the insolent and tumultuous behaviour of the Multitude necessitating him as it were to do that which never any of his Predecessors did before him and I hope never any of his Successors will do after him I mean to pass such an Act as that was Although that Act gave neither of the Houses singly nor both of them jointly any whit or jot of more Power but only of sitting longer than what They or their Predecessors had before or their Successors now have And I hope Mr. Baxter will not say that is a Power to repeal Acts to make Ordinances of equal validity and obligation with Acts without the Royal Assent to them to raise Armies and Monies to maintain them upon their fellow-subjects and against their fellow-subjects and against the King himself also Did the Act that gave them a Power to sit until they thought fit to be dissolved give them Power to do all or any of these things before specified and many other as bold as bad and as illegal as any of those were or because they had leave to sit as long as they listed had they leave to do what they listed also No no it was their ingrateful and ungracious abuse of the Kings too gracious favour to them that was the cause of all those evils that afterwards upon that occasion befel Him and the whole Royal Family and all his Loyal Subjects And therefore of all the Acts that ever that good King did I take the passing of the aforesaid Act for the sitting of the two Houses not during his but their own pleasures to be the worst not only in point of prudence and policy as most prejudicial to the Crown and Government in general but in point of Right and Justice also to all and every one of the rest of his Subjects I mean as many of them as were capable of chusing and of being chosen Parliament-men who were all of them by the passing of this Act excluded from having what was due to them in either of those capacities and consequently from the Rights and Priviledges of Free-born Englishmen as long as those Parliament-Men that were then in being should please to sit and that might be ar was as We saw afterwards as long as they lived or at least as long as they could I mean till the Army which they raised made them to rise whether they would or no and yet there want not some that say they are still in being But to return from this digression because it is not upon this particular occasional alteration of the Government that Mr. Baxter doth openly and professedly ground his denyal of the Kings Sovereignty here in England but upon the fundamental and essential constitution of the Government it self and consequently he denies England to be a Kingdom and our King to be a King properly so called For he himself defines a Kingdom to be such a Common-wealth or body Politick as hath but one Person only for its Sovereign So that according to this definition all Kingdoms that are Kingdoms indeed are Monarchies and all Kings that are Kings indeed or Kings properly so called are Monarchs I say Kings properly so called because some have been called Kings who were really no Kings as the Kings of Sparta or Lacedaemon were who were but Generals of their Armies only the Sovereign Power of the State being in those that were called the Ephori or Overseers to whom those they called their Kings were
Sovereign So that there being then no controversie of the Kings Sovereignty over the whole Nation whether diffusively or representatively considered nor consequently whether this Kingdom were a Monarchy properly so called or no this Controversie I say there being then no such controversie in being could not be one of the causes of the War as Mr. Baxter saith it was I am sure it was none of the causes then pretended And yet I am apt enough to think that the contrivers and promoters of the War that were then leading-men in the House of Commons and some of them in the House of Lords also did from the very beginning design and intend a real change and alteration of the Government it self though They openly pretended but a reformation of abuses that were in it only I mean they did intend to turn the Monarchy into an Aristocracy and to make a Duke of Venice of the King as appears by the 19 Propositions which when they thought themselves strong enough to own they made to him But this They concealed for a long time from the main Body of their Party for fear it might alienate most or many of them that had any thing of Loyalty or Conscience from them Or if they did communicate this arcanum this secret of their grand design to any it was only to those whom they were sure of as desiring such a change of the Government as themselves did and whose help they were to make use of for the bringing of it about I mean the popular Presbyterian and other Schismatical Preachers and perhaps Mr. Baxter was one of them Otherwise I should wonder how he comes to say as he doth the Parliaments have affirmed it namely the Kingdom of England to be a mix'd Commonwealth For sure by Parliament he meant Parliament-men for Parliaments say nothing but by Votes or Orders of the respective Houses and I verily believe there never was any such Vote pass'd in either of them if there were he should have done well to have named those Parliaments or at least some one of those Parliaments that had affirmed the Kingdom or as he calls it the Commonwealth of England not to be Monarchical but a mixed Government which no doubt he would have done if he could being so desirous as he seems to be to have it so But I can tell him of one who was Speaker of the House of Commons and as Learned a one in the Laws and Legal Constitutions of this Realm likewise as knowing what were the Powers and Priviledges of both Houses of Parliament as ever was before or since Him in the Chair and that was my Lord Cook who saith and saith it positively as a known and undoubted truth That this Kingdom of ours is a Monarchy and Monarchy successive by inherent Birth-right adding that of all others it is the most absolute and perfect Form of Governments excluding Interregnums and with it infinite inconveniences And now what say you Mr. Baxter Do you not think this Oracle of our Law for so I think he is esteemed by those of his Profession do you not think I say that he understood the Legal and Fundamental Constitution of this Kingdom as well as you do or any of those foreign Lawyers or Divines whose judgments perhaps you may rely on and be misled by I name Divines as well as Lawyers because some of the Protestant as well as Popish Divines have done what they can to lessen the Power of Kings the latter to make them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to make them accountable and subject to the Pope and the former to make them accountable and subject to the People to their own Subjects which is as dangerous and much more dishonourable than the other CHAP. VI. Calvin answered who though he allows not private Persons to resist yet requires it of some Magistrates whom he supposes the Guardians of the Peoples Liberty No such Magistrates as he supposeth nor doth he say there are and if there were they would be extremely inconvenient to the publick This Opinion taxed by Grotius who yet himself supposing the Sovereignty shared betwixt the King and People in some case allows resistance AND yet this so dangerous and so dishonourable a subjection of Kings to their own Subjects doth Mr. Calvin the Patriarch of the Presbyterians approve of I call him the Patriarch of the Presbyterians because he was the first that after 1500 years Government of the Church by Bishops invented and set up a Government of the Church by a Parity of Presbyters without Bishops and this and this only can properly and truly be called Calvinism whatsoever he holds besides even the most rigid of his Tenets having been held by some of the Schoolmen and some of the Fathers also But this Calvin I say though otherwise a very Learned and as our judicious Hooker saith of him incomparably the wisest man that ever the French Church did enjoy since the hour it did enjoy him though he doth not allow of the resisting of Kings even the worst and most tyrannical of Kings by such of their Subjects as are but private men and consequently not by the generality of the People yet Si qui nunc sunt saith he populares Magistratus ad moderandam Regum libidinem constituti quales olim erant qui Lacedomoniis Regibus oppositi erant Ephori quâ etiam fortè potestate ut nunc res habent funguntur in singulis Regnis tres Ordines quum primarios conventus peragunt adeò illos serocienti Regum licentiae pro officio intercedere non veto ut si Regibus impotenter grassantibus humili Plebeculae insultantibus conniveant corum dissimulationem nefariâ perfidiâ non carere affirmem quia Populi libertatem cujus se Tutores Dei ordinatione positos nôrunt fraudulenter produnt I have put down this passage of Calvins in his own words which for the English Readers sake may be thus translated If there be now saith he any such popular Magistrates constituted I presume he meant legally constituted or appointed by Law for the moderating or restraining the lust or unbridled appetites of Kings such as were of old time the Ephori to the Lacedaemonian Kings and which Power also as things now are perhaps the three Orders or Estates have in several Kingdoms when they meet in Parliament I am so far from forbidding them saith he to interpose their Authority for restraining the raging licentiousness of Kings that if they do but connive at them when they impotently domineer and insult upon the poor Commonalty I do affirm that connivence of theirs is a nefarious persidiousness because they do fraudulently betray the Peoples Liberty whereof they know they are made the Guardians by Gods appointment In which passage of Mr. Calvins wherewith he concludes his Book of Institutions I observe that he speaks not with that confidence and clearness as he useth
the Lawyers call it by the name of Domus Communium the House of Commons I am sure Livy who knew how to call things in Latin by their proper names as well as any man does now tells us that in a contest betwixt a Consul and a Tribune the Tribune bearing himself high upon the account of his Office the Consul said Scias te non Populi sed Plebis Romanae Magistratum esse You must know Sir that you are an Officer not of the People but of the Commonalty of Rome And yet this may be said in excuse of Mr. Baxter's mistake when he calls them the Representatives of the People that he saith no more of them than the House of Commons which he means said of it self for to the four first that Preached before them of whom I my self was one they gave each of them a piece of Plate with this Inscription Donum Populi Anglicani the Gift of the People of England by order of the House no doubt ingraven on it which perhaps they meant not to be Grammatically but Prophetically understood that is to be understood of them not as they were then but what they meant to be before they left sitting and as we saw they were after they had put down the Lords as well as the King and made themselves the High and Mighty States of England and Ireland and instead of Representatives and Trustees made themselves Lords and Masters of those that trusted them until He whom they had trusted with their Forces made himself Lord and Master of them also the People in the mean time the Free-born People of England having been made or rather having made themselves as arrant Slaves and Vassals as ever any People were unto them both But to return to what I was speaking of I do not find I say that any Parliament properly so called that is the King Lords and Commons or that both or either of the two Houses joyntly or severally did ever declare or vote the Kingdom of England to be no Monarchy or that the King of England was not the Sovereign and sole Sovereign of and in this and all other his Kingdoms and Dominions On the contrary I find that in all the Addresses made to the King as well by both Houses jointly as by either of them severally from the beginning of the War to the end of it they always acknowledged the King to be their Sovereign and themselves even in their publick and Parliamentary capacity to be his Subjects And if in their Parliamentary notion and capacity they were his Subjects I wonder in what notion or capacity they can be said to be Partners or partakers with him in the Sovereignty Besides he that will have either or both of the Houses to have a part of the Sovereignty must allow them a Title to Majesty also For Majesty and Sovereignty are Termini Convertibiles convertible terms as the Houses themselves confess when they treat the King sometimes with the title of Sovereign and sometimes with the title of Majesty as signifying by both these Words but one and the same thing namely the Supremacy of Power in the King Now I would fain know of Mr. Baxter whether if he were to Petition the House of Lords or the House of Commons or both of them he would address it to their Majesty the House of Lords or to their Majesty the House of Commons or to their Majesty the Lords and Commons assembled in Parliament if he did I believe he would be laught at for his folly by them and perhaps punisht for his presumption by the King And yet if the Sovereignty be divided betwixt Them and the King as he saith it is I see no reason why the title of Majesty may not be given to Them as well as to the King or at least partly to them and partly to him though but proportionably to the division of the Sovereignty betwixt them of which if the Kings part be greater than that of the House of Lords and that of the House of Lords be greater than that of the House of Commons which I am afraid Mr. Baxter will hardly allow then if Majesty be the proper attribute of Sovereignty and Excellent a proper Epithet to Majesty then according to Mr. Baxter's distinctness of notion and expression the style of the House of Commons should be Their Excellent Majesty and the style of the House of Lords Their More Excellent Majesty as well as the Kings style is His Most Excellent Majesty and then there may be Treason against the House of Lords or against the House of Commons as well as against the King if laesa Majestas the offending or injuring of Majesty be Treason nay then we have three Sovereigns and not one only for whosoever hath any share in the Sovereignty is a Sovereign and then I wonder why we do not take an Oath of Allegiance to the two Houses as well as to the King nay I wonder much more why they of both Houses do all of them take an Oath of Allegiance to the King and cannot sit in either House till they do so Surely one Sovereign doth not owe Allegiance to another no not the least of Sovereigns to the greatest for as all Sovereigns the greatest as well as the least are equally under God so the least as well as the greatest are equally under none but God at least quatenùs so far forth as they are Sovereigns or in those things and places where and when they have a right to Sovereignty or to any part thereof CHAP. X. The King declared by an Act of Parliament injoyning the Oath of Supremacy to be the only Supreme Governour Mr. B 's sorry evasion of this Oath and Queen Elizabeths Declaration concerning it BUT what need is there of making such Collections or Inferences from the Addresses made to the King from either or both Houses of Parliament with their full subscriptions thereunto to prove that they acknowledg the King to be their Sovereign their fole Sovereign and themselves to be his Subjects his humble and loyal Subjects even in their Parliamentary capacity for in that capacity it was that they addressed themselves to him What need is there I say of insisting upon such more remote though very pregnant and concluding proofs when several Parliaments properly so called that is Parliaments consisting of the head the King and all the integral members that is of the Lords Spiritual as well as Temporal together with the House of Commons have in positive and express words and that not by a Vote Order or Ordinance but by an Act declared the King not only to be the Supreme but the only Supreme Governour of this Realm and of all other his Highnesses Dominions and Countries and that as well in all Spiritual or Ecclesiastical things and causes as temporal These I say are the very words of an Act of Parliament properly so called that is of a full and free of a compleat and
therefore I am sure he cannot forget it or at least will remember it assoon as he is put in mind of it And to him I appeal for the verifying of what I have said as to this particular But if any man shall notwithstanding Sir Philip Warwick's attestation think it to be incredible that the two Houses of Parliament being then in their Zenith should indure any such thing to be said so much to their reproach and condemnation of their cause and of all their proceedings without any animadversion upon him that said it I answer it was partly because they were then in their Zenith so high advanced and so highly elevated with the success God had for our sins and for their obduration permitted them to have that they despised what any man did or could say against them and partly because they could not have taken notice of it without inflicting some punishment or other upon him for it which they could not have done he being a man of such eminency not only in regard of his quality but much more in regard of his learning and sanctity and in regard of the very great reputation he had thereby acquired both at home and abroad without exposing themselves to the envy and hatred of the whole World and without doing themselves any good by it and therefore all things considered they thought it best to take no notice at all of it as for ought I ever heard they did not Howsoever what I affirm that pious and learned Arch-Bishop said whether he said it or no is true namely that the Power of the Sword or the Power of making War though for their own defence only or for never so good an end was not in the two Houses but in the King and in the King only as they did themselves acknowledg because at that very time and at that very Treaty one of the prime Articles which they mainly insisted on was to have the Sword for so many years to be put into their hands by the Kings passing of an Act of Parliament to that purpose and for their raising of mony during that time for the support and exercise of that Power in what proportion they thought or should think fit upon their Fellow-Subjects all which they had done before by virtue of their Ordinances only which either they did or did not think to be a legal and sufficient Authority for their taking of the Sword and using it as they did If they did think so why might not the same authority have been sufficient for the continuance of it and if so what need was there of an Act for the trusting them with it but for a time only But if they did not think their own Ordinances to be a legal and sufficient Authority for their taking of the Sword and taxing of the People and the exercising all those other Acts of Arbitrary Power which they did for so many years together by vertue of their own Ordinances only why then habemus confitentes reos We have their own confession not only that they took the Sword which neither the Law nor the King had put into their hands and therefore were Vsurpers of the Regal Authority but had made use of it against the King or which is all one against those that were commissioned by the King and therefore were Traytors and Rebels as likewise that their own Ordinances were not legally sufficient to justifie their so doing and consequently that they have not such a Legislative Power as Mr. Baxter saith they have and which he is so confident of as that he offers his head to the Block if the reasons he gives for the proof of it be disproved which I am now in the last place to try whether I can do or not The end of the third Section SECT IV. England a Monarchy and the Soveraignty solely in the KING prov'd against Mr. Baxter as also that neither the Parliaments concurrence as the Peoples Representatives to the making Laws nor their being Trustees for the Peoples Rights gives them any share in the Soveraignty CHAP. I. The mischief of Schismatical Books Mr. Baxter 's Anti-episcopal and Anti-monarchical Aphorisms The Soveraignty not divided as Mr. B. saith betwixt KING and Parliament Prov'd by the Parliaments acknowledgments and by the Oath of Supremacy AND first thanks be to God and the King that Mr. Baxter is not Lugdunensem causam dicturus ad aram that he is not to plead his cause at the Kings-Bench Barr. For God knows that all the hurt I wish him is that no more hurt may be done by Him and for this end and for this end only it was that I silenced him from preaching and for this end and for this end only it is that I would have him prohibited from writing or at least from publishing what he writes until he is licensed by Authority to do so For when he hath published such pernicious Principles against the legal constitution of the Church and State as he hath done in divers of his Books especially in that of the Holy Commonwealth it is too late and to very little purpose to say as he doth say of some of them that he would have them taken pro non scriptis as if they had not been written For Serò medicina paratur Cùm mala per long as invaluêre moras that is Physick comes too late when ill humors through long delays have got too great a head An Arch-Heretick may by Gods mercy be himself reconcil'd to the Truth and become Orthodox and an Arch-Schismatick may by the same mercy be reconciled to the Church and become Conformable and yet that Heresie that was broached by the one and that Schism that was introduced by the other may be propagated and perpetuated by their Books and by their Disciples from Generation to Generation to the Worlds end and if Master Baxter will needs have a secondary Original sin I think this is that which may most properly be so called Our Countryman Brown who would needs have our Church of England to be no Church was himself convinced of this error so that he not only became a Member but a Minister of the Church of England and as I have been informed died Parson of a Parish called A-Church in Northamptonshire But did Brownism dye with him No there are Brownists still and will be God knows how long perhaps till Doom's day put an end to the World and all the Divisions that have been are or shall be in it So that as nothing can be more criminal than to be the Author of a Schism Sect or Heresie so nothing can be more dangerous than to suffer the spreading and growth of them especially of such of them as are destructive in their natural tendency whatsoever the intention of the Authors and Abettors may be to the peace and welfare of the established Government either in Church or State And such say I are Mr. Baxter's Anti-episcopal Aphorisms in
relation to the Church and such are his Anti-monarchical Aphorisms in relation to the State which will be Thorns in the sides of both Church and State to trouble and molest them if they be not Engines to undermine or overthrow them as long as there be Baxterians in the World as there will be no doubt long after Mr. Baxter is dead and though he himself before he dies do truly and heartily as I do truly and heartily wish he may if he have not done it yet repent of having been the Author of some and Abetter of all of them As for his Anti-episcopal Aphorisms and all other his Heterodoxies relating to the established Government Discipline of the Church they have been so thoroughly canvassed and so thoroughly confuted by so many much more learned Pens than mine that as I have said already in my Preface so I say again I mean not to meddle with any of them But as for his Anti-monarchical Aphorisms because he saith I am a defier of Deity and Humanity for taking exceptions against them and for my justifying the rights of Kings against the grounds he lays for justifying the resisting of Kings by their Subjects and particularly of the late horrid Rebellion of the worst of Subjects against the best of Kings the most groundless in its causes and the most unchristian and the most inhumane in its effects that ever was in this or perhaps in any other Kingdom I thought my self concerned to enlarge my self in saying of what I have said to justifie my exceptions against those Aphorisms some of which I have before printed and now reprinted and could have printed many more and some of them as bad as the worst of those and as destructive of the established Government in all Bodies Politick especially to that of this in our Kingdom which is and hath been always taken for a Kingdom properly so called that is for a Monarchy or for such a State or Body Politick wherein the Soveraignty or Supremacy of power is in One only Mr. Baxter in order to justifying of the late Rebellion tells us it is no Monarchy because the Soveraignty is not in one only namely not in the King alone but divided betwixt the King and the two Houses of Parliament which he endeavours to prove First by the Testimony of both Parties principally concerned in it namely the Parliaments affirming and the King 's owning and acknowledging of it And 2dly by Reason or by Arguments drawn from the Constitution and Practice of the Government it self As to the King 's own Acknowledgment that there is such a division of the Soveraignty betwixt Him and the Lords and Commons I shall speak of it hereafter And as to the Parliaments affirming of it which he only saith they do and have done without naming any time when or what Parliaments they were that did so I have answered at large already and that not only negatively by denying that any Parliament properly so called that is consisting of King Lords and Commons did ever affirm or can in reason be supposed ever to have affirmed any such thing but positively also that all Parliaments even those that are improperly so called I mean the Body without the Head or as the two Houses only are called the Parliament even in this notion I say the Parliament hath always in all Addresses that have been made to the King by either of the Houses severally or by both Houses joyntly acknowledged the King to be their Soveraign and themselves to be his humble and loyal Subjects and that when they Address themselves to Him not as so many several single Persons or every one in his Personal capacity but as in their representative or Parliamentary capacity as they were one or both of the two Houses and how they be Soveraigns and Subjects or partly Soveraigns and partly Subjects in one and the same notion or under one and the same capacity is too subtil and airy a speculation for me to comprehend But that which I did then and do now principally insist upon for proof of the Parliaments acknowledgments of the King's Soveraignty or that the Soveraignty here in this Kingdom is in the King alone and not in the King Lords and Commons joyntly as Mr. Baxter would have it is the Oath of Supremacy whereby in as positive and as plain words as can be devised several Parliaments properly so called have declared and caused it to be sworn that the King is the only Supreme Governor of this Realm and of all other his Highnesses Dominions and Countries as well in all Spiritual and Ecclesiastical things and causes as Temporal Which I repeat again because which I did not observe before the Parliament by enjoyning Men to swear that the King is the only Supreme Governour in Spirituals as well as Temporals seems to suppose or to take it for granted that there were none that pretended to be the Kings Subjects but would willingly and readily acknowledg the King to be the only Supreme Governour in Temporals and consequently that there is no division of the Soveraignty betwixt the King and the Parliament or betwixt the King Lords and Commons For it is the Soveraignty in Temporals only that Mr. Baxter would have to be so divided for as to the Soveraignty in Ecclesiastical things or causes I believe if Mr. Baxter would tell us what lies at the bottom of his heart we should find that he thinks neither King nor Parliament have any thing to do with it and consequently that there can be no division of that betwixt them But of this we shall have occasion to speak more hereafter Now therefore having postponed the consideration of what Mr. Baxter infers for proof of his pretended Division of the Soveraignty betwixt the King and Parliament from the Kings own concessions I proceed to the examination of the Reasons he gives to prove this Kingdom to be no Monarchy or that the Soveraignty thereof is not in one only Which reasons of his are all of them reducible to this one of the Legislative power or the power of making and repealing Laws for the whole Nation which as he saith is not only a part but a principal part of the Soveraignty and therefore if this be not in the King alone but divided between the King and Parliament as Mr. Baxter saith it is the Soveraignty cannot be in the King alone but must be divided betwixt the King and Parliament CHAP. II. What is meant by the word Parliament The two Houses being called together and dismissed at the Kings pleasure are not co-ordinate or sharers with him in the Soveraignty NOW this being the summ and substance of all Mr. Baxter hath said to prove the War made by the Parliament against the King was a just War and no Rebellion and whereon he so confidently relies that he is ready he saith to offer his Head to Justice if it can be solidly confuted either as to
Objection might be this That although the Parliament or the two Houses of Parliament cannot make any Laws without the Kings consent yet the King may make Laws without their consent in some cases namely when the publick safety is concerned that such a Law or such Laws should be made though one or both of the Houses will not consent to it In such a Case I say not according to mine own but Mr. Baxter's opinion such a Law or such Laws may be made by the King without nay against the consent of both Houses and à paritate rationis for the same cause and by the like reason Mony may be raised if without raising of Mony a Naval Force for example as may be sufficient for the preservation of the Kingdom from imminent dangers by a foreign Invasion cannot be had and then according to Mr. Baxter's Hypothesis what can be said against raising of Ship-money by the late King he being the Judge of the greatness and imminency of the danger and that it could not stay for a Parliamentary Supply there being no Parliament then sitting and the greatest Extraparliamentary Judicatory of the Nation having been advis'd with by the King and given him their opinions that he might legally do what he did certainly these things considered if Mr. Baxter's Aphorism be true the King 's raising or indeavouring to raise Ship-Mony without consent of Parliament was not so hainous a violation of the legal constitution which he was obliged or had obliged himself to govern by especially after it was by his consent condemned in Parliament as to be made as it is by Mr. Baxter one of the principal causes of his siding with the Parliament in Rebellion against the King For if the King were maximè dignus istâ contumeliâ indignus illequi faceret tamen if he did never so much deserve this affront yet it did not become Mr. Baxter to give it him not only because by the highest Judicature then in being it was declared to be legal but because according to Mr. Baxter's own judgment declared in this Aphorism the King might have done it supposing it necessary for the Preservation of the publick though it had not been legal But this shall not be my Answer to the aforesaid Objection I remember what I have said before upon another Occasion viz. that A mischief is better than an Inconvenience which I think is a maxime of our Law and the meaning of it is as I conceive that it is better to run the hazard of a very great Evil which possibly may but is very unlikely will befall us than for the avoiding or preventing of it to make use of such a Remedy as frequently may be and probably will be made use of when there is no such Occasion for it or need of it And so that which was used as a Remedy for the present may prove a Malady for the future in the Consequence of it And therefore for answer to the aforesaid objection I will not say that the King can make Laws to oblige the whole Nation without the consent of both Houses of Parliament though never so much for the publick good or never so necessary for the preservation of the whole Kingdom but this I will say that though such Laws cannot be made without their consent yet it is not they nor their consenting to them that makes them to be Laws For then either the Bills would be Laws assoon as they were passed by both Houses or the being passed by the two Houses must oblige the King to pass them also but neither of these is true according to the legal and fundamental constitution of our Government as appears not only by the constant Practice to the contrary but by the frequent and importunate Addresses made unto the late King by the two Houses of the rebellious Parliament to make their Ordinances to be Laws by his consent to them which certainly being so high as they were then they would never have done if they had thought that either their Ordinances were Laws or had the Obligatory power of Laws before the King gave it to them or that he might not if he would refuse to give it So that it being not only the Kings consent but his free arbitrary and voluntary consent that gives being to all Laws the Legislative Power properly so called must needs be in the King and in the King only The Legislative Power I say properly so called I mean the very making of that to be Law which is Law abstracting from whatsoever it is that goes before or that follows after it is made for certainly neither of them can be essential to the making of it and yet both of them may be very requisite for the making of the Laws to be such as may the more willingly be obeyed by the People Now by what goes before the making of Laws here with us I mean the considering debating and agreeing of both Houses what shall be proposed to the King by them to be by him made to be Laws and by what follows after the King by his Le Roy le veult hath made them Laws I mean the solemn Preface or Preamble to them whereby it is declared that there was a concurrence of the Lords and Commons to the making or enacting of them because the subject matter of them was prepared and agreed on by the Lords and Commons and then and not till then proposed to the King by them to be made Laws by him So that the subject matter of our Laws is and always must be from the two Houses or at least from their agreement and consenting to it And in this respect it is that they may be said to concur to the making of our Laws though they do not make them For it is as I said before not the Matter ex quâ res est out of which a thing is made which is prepared and proposed by the Houses but the Form per quam res est by which a thing is what it is which is wholly from the King that makes what the Houses propose to him to be made a Law to be a Law which although he may do or refuse to do as he pleaseth yet because he can make nothing to be Law but what by the Agreement of both Houses is propos'd to him to be made a Law by him and consequently though our Laws are not nor cannot be made by them yet they are not nor cannot be made without them neither therefore I say they do concur to the making of them though they do not make them They concur to the making of them because the Legislative matter or the matter whereof Laws are made and must be made is from them but they do not make them because the form whereby they are made to be what they are is not at all from them but solely and wholly from the King and consequently he is the sole efficient or
have the King and the two Houses of Parliament to be Co-ordinates and that any of the two is to over-rule the third and consequently the two Houses of Parliament to over-rule the King if They agree and He will not this was HERL's way one of the Prolocutors of the Westminster Assembly called together by the two Houses in the Rebellious Parliament But Master BAXTER will have the Soveraignty divided betwixt the King and the two Houses or betwixt the King and the Parliament and will have it to be lawful for either of the Parties to defend its own Right by force if it be incroached upon by the other and that the People are to take part with the Party encroached upon against the Party encroaching but with this difference that They are always to believe what the Parliament declares against the King to be true because they are their Trustees not only to defend their Rights but to inform their Judgments whether they be wronged or no and because they are their Trustees not only as they are Subjects now but as they were originally or at first Contractors before they were Subjects and did then by bargain reserve unto themselves certain Priviledges and Immunities to be exempted for ever from the Kings Jurisdiction which if their Trustees whom they are to believe declare to be violated they may lawfully take Arms against the King to maintain or recover those Rights of theirs and to defend that part of the Soveraignty which the Parliament have in the Government Now putting all these things together and supposing a corrupt Majority of Parliament-men in both Houses as Mr. Baxter confesseth there may be and we know there hath been and therefore may be so again who can secure the King though he reign never so much according to Law from being always in danger of a Rebellion or the Kingdom from being always in danger of a Civil War which being the worst of Evils that can happen to any Body Politick they that sit at the helm ought above all things else to take especial care to prevent the broaching any such Principles as tend to the stirring up of the People to Sedition and Rebellion by making them believe that in some cases it is not only lawful but their duty to take up Arms against the King and that they shall do God and the King too good service in so doing Such are those Principles of Mr. Baxter before rehearsed published and owned by him in many of his Books especially in that of the Holy Common-Wealth and amongst the rest especially two of which he seems to be the Original Parent or very first Author as namely first That the Peoâ—le of England are represented by their Trustees in Parliament not only as Subjects to the King but as Contractors with the King before he was their King and before they were his Subjects for which he brings no other proof but that he takes it for undeniable And 2dly That the Soveraignty here with us is not in the King alone as the Oath of Supremacy saith it is but that it is divided betwixt the King and the two Houses of Parliament and for proof of this the only reason he gives is That the Legislative Power which is essential to Soveraignty is in them as well as in the King and the late King himself confessed it to be so Whether it be so or no I have already considered and examined at large and I hope have proved that the King and the King alone is the efficient cause or maker of our Laws whatsoever the two Houses may antecedently do towards the making of them CHAP. XIII The late King 's owning that the Laws are made jointly by King Lords and Commons how to be understood NEither do I think what Mr. Baxter saith the late King confesseth in his answer from York to the Parliaments XIX Propositions namely That in this Kingdom the Laws are joyntly made by a King by an House of Peers and by an House of Commons chosen by the People doth being rightly understood contradict what I have said of the making of our Laws by the King only For although to say the same thing is made solely by one and joyntly by more than one seems to be a contradiction yet if by making the same thing be meant the making of it not in the same but several sences it is no contradiction to say it is made by one and no more in one sence and yet that it is made jointly by more in another sence For example according to an instance before given It may truly be said that Christ alone shall judge the World and yet it may truly be said that the XII Apostles for so saith Christ himself and all the rest of the Saints for so saith St. Paul shall judge the World together with him because the judging of the World by Christ is meant in one sense and the judging of the World by the Saints in another For it is Christ and Christ alone or Christ and none but Christ shall judge the World as a Judge properly so called that is authoritativè or by his own inherent power and Authority But the Saints are said to judge the World approbativè by assenting to and approving of the judgment given by Christ as just and righteous so that in propriety of speech they are not to be called Judges but Assessors and Assenters only In like manner as to the making of our Laws it may be truly said that the King alone is the maker of them because it is by the King and by the King alone that they are made to be Laws which were before no Laws and yet it may truly though not so properly be said too that they are made by the King and the two Houses of Parliament because they do consent to the Kings making of them to be Laws and not only so but also because they do not only consent to the making and publishing of them after they are made Laws by the King but they must consent to have them made Laws by the King before the King can make them to be Laws And yet for all that it is the King and the King alone who by his LE ROT LE VEVLT or his FIAT doth make them to be Laws In which operative and efficacious words neither of the Houses concur with him and yet it is by those words only or alone that what was before but a Bill that is an Embryo or at most but materia disposita matter fit to be made a Law of is informed and enlivened with that obliging power and authority both directive and coactive which makes it to be a Law So that all the two Houses can be said to do towards the making of a Law is to give it a posse fieri a capacity to be made a Law but it is the King and the King only that gives it its factum esse its being made so and yet because the
observeth to have been the error of Polybius in judging the Roman to have been a mixed Government and the Soveraignty or supreme power thereof to have been divided betwixt the Consuls the Senate the People when saith Grotius the Government was indeed meerly popular or Democratical And the cause of this mistake in Polybius saith Grotius was his respiciens ad actiones ipsas non ad jus agendi his looking at the things that were done not at the authority whereby they were done whereas if he had consider'd that what was done either by the Consuls or by the Senate was done by an authority derived from the People signified nothing if it were not ratified by the People he would have been convinc'd that the Soveraignty or supreme power was wholly in the People consequently that it was a meer Democracy and not a mixed Government In like manner Mr. Baxter looking only at the things that are done by the 3. Estates in Parliament as to their concurrence to the making of Laws subordinate managery of other parts of the Government not considering by whose Authority they do what they do and that all that they do signifies nothing unless it be ratified by the King erroneously at least if not fallaciously concludes the Soveraignty or supreme power it self to be divided betwixt the King and the 3. Estates or betwixt the King the 2. Houses of Parliament whereas their very Parliamentary being consequently the power of their Parliamentary acting is derived from the Supremacy of power inseparably and indivisibly and incommunicably inherent in the King But although the Soveraignty it self or original fountain of all power in a Monarchy be indivisibly incommunicably in the person of the King yet the streams that issue or flow from that fountain may be and are and of necessity must be divided communicated so as may be most serviceable for the several uses the whole body Politick or the whole body of the Kingdom may have of it And as this Supreme or Soveraign Power though it be always indivisibly inherent in the King as the fountain of it may have its several streams divided communicated so in the exercise of its several Acts operations it may be in all Political Kingdoms it is limited determined in some more in some less but in none more nor so much for the good of the Subject without prejudice to the Soveraignty Majesty of the King than in this of ours where the People by their Representatives are not only admitted to propose what they would have to be made Laws but where no Law can be made but what they propose or consent to though they do not make it though it be in the Kings power to refuse the making of it because the Laws we have already are sufficient to secure all their Rights unto the People as long as they are in force in force they will be until the People themselves do consent to the repealing of them For the King as he can make no new Law so he can repeal no old Law without the consent of the Representatives of the People who most certainly will never give their consent for repealing of Magna Charta or the Petition of Right or any other Law now in force for the securing any of their just Rights and Privileges So that the Kings Negative is not nor cannot be prejudicial to the Interest of the People but it is absolutely necessary for the preservation of Monarchy For if the King could not refuse to make what the 2. Houses propose to be Laws the Soveraignty would be wholly in them not at all in him Nay he would be so far from having the Soveraignty of a King that he would not have the liberty of the meanest of his Subjects that sits in the House of Commons in giving his I or No according to the dictate of his own Reason and Conscience which as it is every private mans right by nature as he is a reasonable Creature so it is the Kings right by Nature and Prerogative too as he is a King it being impossible to be a King without it And therefore those that say the King is bound to pass all those Laws quas Vulgus elegerit which the People or Commonalty shall make choice of or that he is but one of the three Co-ordinates therefore may be overvoted by the other two or that he hath but a part of the Soveraignty and therefore cannot over-rule those that have their parts in the Soveraignty as well as he or that he may not prorogue or dissolve Parliaments when he thinks fit to do so All these are Enemies not only to the well-being but to the very being of Monarchy and that not of absolute or despotical Monarchy only but of Political or Paternal Monarchy also And therefore though they cajole and flatter the People never so much they are the greatest Enemies they have and as such the People ought to look upon them would do so if they were not like Beasts without understanding nay worse than Beasts without sence and memory of what they have so often and so lately suffered by listning to the same Songs of the same Sirens or sweet Singers that have so often deceived them But if the People cannot or will not understand the things that belong unto their peace yet Be wise O ye Kings and be learned O ye Judges of the Earth be wise for the Peoples sake be wise for your own sakes also For if you do not prevent the raising raging of those waves the Pilot as well as the Passengers will be swallowed up by them And there is no way to prevent the raising of those Waves nor the raging of them when they are raised but by rebuking the Winds that raised them for if it were not for those boysterous Winds that puff them up there would be no such swelling Waves as we see there are In the mean time I hope I have said nothing for the justifying of my self from being a Defier of Deity and Humanity and from being an Enemy to God to Kings and to all Mankind as Mr. Baxter saith I am because I maintain it to be Vnlawful for Subjects to resist their Soveraigns in any cause or upon any provocation whatsoever and for the confutation of Mr. Baxter's erroneous and seditious Aphorisms or Principles to the contrary I hope I say I have said nothing in order to either of these ends that will give any just offence to such as are judicious and impartial Friends to Truth and do really wish and desire the continuance of the Peace and welfare of their Country and then for such as are contrary minded I care not what they think or say of me The End of the Fifth Section SECTION VI. The rest of Mr. Baxter's Reflexions called to account as concerning the Bishop's advising him to reade Hooker and
to be judge in Church cases and of whom he is to tolerate and countenance and whom he is not to tolerate but to punish it is he I say who by and with the advice and consent of his great Council of Lords and Commons hath judged all such aforesaid Assemblies to be seditious Conventicles and consequently all the Preachers in them to be seditious Preachers and I hope Mr. B. will not deny because he hath granted it already that all seditious Preachers are to be restrained and if they are to be restrained and restrained by those that are the proper Judges whether they ought to be restrained or no certainly there can be no reason to excuse and much less to justify the preaching of those that are so restrained after they are restrained and during such their restraint and therefore all those reasons alledged by Mr. Baxter in the aforesaid Book of his called An Apology for the Nonconformist Ministers are to no purpose as to the proving of that which they are alledged to prove namely the obligation of those silenced Ministers to preach in Conventicles whom he pleads for though they be silenced and silenced by those whom he confesseth to have authority to silence them and whom he confesseth likewise to be the proper judges whether they are to be silenced or no and though that for which they are forbidden to preach in Conventicles is because such meetings and such preachings are seditious and dangerous as to the safety of the King's Person as well as of his Government which Mr. Baxter confesseth in a place before quoted to be one cause why men may be justly restrained from preaching and how they that are justly restrained from preaching can be obliged to preach Mr. Baxter is to prove when and how he can In the mean time all that I can imagine Master Baxter hath to say is that though they preach in Conventicles yet they do not preach Sedition or any thing that may disaffect their Hearers either to the King or to the Government But what if they that sit at the helm and whose office and duty it is to take care nè quid detrimenti Respublica capiat That the Commonwealth get no harm or come to no damage do believe and have reason to believe that you do and will preach that in private now which they know you have preached openly and often heretofore and have no reason to think but that you are the same men still that you have been always even since the very beginning of the Reformation that is such as have been always and ever will be undermining the established Government of the Church and State may they not I say that sit at the Helm in order to the securing of the publick peace of the Kingdom and safety of the King may they not in point of justice nay ought they not in point of prudence and conscience too upon the aforesaid consideration to forbid such meetings And if they may and ought to forbid them the very Meetings themselves after they are forbidden are seditious whatsoever they say or doe when they are met because by the Eye of the Law they are looked upon as meeting to doe that for the doing whereof the Law forbids them to meet And whereas one of Mr. Baxter's chief reasons why they were obliged in conscience to preach though they are forbidden it because they shall be guilty of the murthering of Souls if they do not the murthering of such Souls he means as might have been saved by their preaching and do perish for want of it one of the main reasons why the King by advice of his great Council hath forbidden them to preach is to prevent the murthering of Souls and Bodies too by their preaching I mean the Souls and Bodies of such as are by them and their preaching disaffected to the Government both in Church or State and made ready and resolute to undermine and overturn both whensoever there shall be an opportunity of so doing which they would never have thought of if it had not been for such Preachers and such preaching Mr. Baxter confesseth he incouraged many thousands to ingage in the late War which if it were a Rebellion as no doubt it was though perhaps he did not think it to be so was to engage them Bodies and Souls whether they kill'd or were kill'd in a damnable action And who can tell whether he and those that are principled as he is may not even now be encouraging many thousands more to doe as they did then when the like opportunity shall invite them to it the rather because Master Baxter himself hath told us that as yet be cannot see that he was mistaken in the main cause nor dared to repent of it nor forbear to doe the same if it were to doe again in the same state of things that is if there were or if there should be such a War betwixt the King and the two Houses of Parliament as there was then he would encourage as many thousands as he did then to engage against the King And hath not the King having such fair warning given him good reason to prevent the making of Parties by men that are thus minded and that not for his own sake onely nor onely for their sakes that may be endangered in their bodies and their goods for adhering to him but even for their sakes also who may by such Preachers and preaching be persuaded and encouraged to rebell against him and consequently not onely to a hazard of the loss of their lives but to a certainty of the loss of their Souls without repentance which is hardly to be hoped for those that dye in an Act of sin especially so great as that of Rebellion And therefore for this reason onely if there were no other those that are silenced ought not to preach for fear of murthering of Souls by their preaching which is all I have to say to this particular and which if it be not enough I hope one or other of those my reverend Brethren the Bishops to whom Mr. Baxter addresseth his Plea for the liberty of the Nonconformists to preach notwithstanding their being silenced by Act of Parliament will more fully and more at large examine and confute that Treatise of his for this reason at least if there were no other nè si nullus ex ipsorum numero contradicat omnes cum illo consentire videantur Lest if none of their number should gainsay him they may all be thought to comply and agree with him and so he and those he pleads for will perhaps boast they do if none of them say any thing to the contrary CHAP. XI Mr. B 's Reflexion upon the Bishop concerning Master Jone 's his being put out of the Duke's service taken to task and sent to Elymas the Sorcerer One thing true in it that the Protestant Religion may be preserved better without the Nonconformists than with them
Bishop of Worcester and coming to me to know the cause of it I told him it was because he had Preached in my Diocese without asking my leave or having any licence from me for it and that now I could not give him such a Licence partly in regard of what he had asserted and maintained at the Conference in the Savoy but principally in regard of many of those Positions or as he calls them Aphorisms of his in his Book of the Holy-Commonwealth which were inconsistent with Kingly Government and this I told him in the presence of the then Dean of Worcester Dr. Warmestry and of Mr. Isaack Walton then my Steward which he taking no notice of in his Narrative of the cause why I continued his suspension and would not suffer him to Preach any more in my Diocese but making his friends at Kidderminster to believe it was only for what he had asserted at the Conference in the Savoy whereof he made a false relation also I thought it neither improper nor unnecessary to annex to that Letter of mine which I had written in answer to that Narrative of his that Collection of Aphorisms out of the aforesaid Book of his that the World might be judg whether the Author of such Maxims as those were fit to be a Preacher in such a Kingdom as this or no and this I say was the cause why I Printed them at first 2. The reason why I have reprinted those Aphorisms as well as that Letter with an Addition of some others to them and aggravations of them was to justifie my exceptions against them and to shew that I am not a Defier of Deity and humanity nor an Enemy to God to Kings and to all mankind as Mr. Baxter would have me thought to be because I do not think all unlimited Governours to be Tyrants because they are unlimited or that lawful and rightful Kings if they be Tyrants or govern tyrannically may therefore be lawfully resisted or deposed by their Subjects 3. And lastly if I have indeavoured to shew the falseness and dangerousness of this and other of his Aphorisms subservient to the same end it is not to make him but those Maxims of his odious not unto others only that may be hurt by them but to himself also that he may repent of them which if he have done and done it as he should do and as himself professed he would do if he were convinced there were cause for it I am sure he will not he cannot be offended with the aggravating the hainousness and dangerousness of any of those opinions or practises which he himself hates and detests more than any body else can if he have truly repented of them which if I should take for granted that he hath done since yet if he had not done it before those Aphorisms of his which I excepted against were first Printed it was neither uncharitably nor impertinently no nor unnecessarily done of me neither to let the World know upon what false grounds and by what fallacious and seditious Maxims and Principles Mr. Baxter had undertaken to justifie the late horrid Rebellion and to justifie himself and those Thousands whom as he confesseth he had perswaded to do as He did viz. to Rebell and Fight against the King which he was so far from having repented of when I first Printed those Aphorisms that he tells the World in Print not above a year or two before that he durst not repent of it nor forbear the doing of the same if it were to be done again in the same state of things Neither did the World or I hear any thing from him to the contrary till many years after and whether what he published then or hath published since be a sufficient proof that He is not still of the same mind he was when he published those Aphorisms may well be doubted In the mean time those Aphorisms of his being of so dangerous consequence to the publick and having upon that account been the main cause why I would not suffer the Author of them to Preach in my Diocese until he had as publickly recanted as he had asserted them I thought my self obliged to publish them when I did publish them first to let the World see I had reason to do what I did to Mr. Baxter when I did it how well soever he might behave himself afterwards And as this was the reason why I Printed them at first so the reason why I have Reprinted them now was partly to justifie my former exceptions against them and the dangerous consequences of them and partly to vindicate my self from being a Defier of Deity and Humanity and an Enemy to God to Kings and to all mankind for excepting against but one of them only as Mr. Baxter saith I am and partly likewise to show that there is still just cause to doubt that Mr. Baxter may still be of the same judgment as to the holding of the same Seditious and Rebellious Principles as He did formerly notwithstanding any thing He hath written as yet to the contrary The two former would have been reason enough for my Reprinting of those Aphorisms though it were never so certain or so evident that Mr. Baxter had really and sincerely recanted them all The third I add ex abundanti over and above and wish with all my heart there were no cause to doubt but that he had really and sincerely recanted them all or at least those that are most dangerous and prejudicial to the safety peace and welfare of our own King and Kingdom which I am afraid he hath not done either by what he hath said in that Paper which he would have taken for a Recantation of some of those Aphorisms in his Holy Commonwealth or by the professions he hath made of his Loyalty in the second Part of his Plea for the Non-Conformists And first As to the Paper which he calls a Recantation We are to observe the time when it was Printed which was in the year 70 just 10 years after the Kings coming home How long may we think it would have been if the King had not come home at all or if Richard the Son could have held by force what Oliver his Father whom Mr. Baxter magnifies so much had gotten for him by murthering of his Master And truly if this Recantation had been the effect of a true and hearty repentance I cannot imagine what should be the cause of its coming forth no sooner unless he was so long before he was convinced that he had done amiss in writing what he had written or in doing what he had done during the time of the Rebellion so that his heart indured as long a Siege as that of Troy before it would give him leave to make any acknowledgment at all that he had writ or done any thing to be recanted or repented But what if the King should have suspended his Pardon as long as Mr. Baxter did his Confession What might have
become of Mr. Baxter in the mean time And yet surely Confession and Contrition ought to precede forgiveness both in foro Poli and in foro Soli too and as well with men as with God And truly it would have been more for Mr. Baxter's own credit and for the Kings and Churches satisfaction if it had been so I mean if he had publickly Recanted what he ought and as he ought to have Recanted both in point of judgment and practise a great deal sooner than he did as either before the Kings coming home which had been indeed the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the most proper and most acceptable time or at least assoon as he had the first opportunity for it after the Kings coming home And such an opportunity he had if he could have found in his heart to have made use of it I mean that time when the King was graciously pleased though he knew well enough what Mr. Baxter had written and done against his Father and himself to give him leave to Preach before him in the Chappel-Royal Then then I say was the time and there the place for him publickly and humbly and solemnly upon his Knees to have prefaced his Sermon or ensuing Discourse with a self-accusing self-condemning Exomologesis or Confession made in his own and in the name of his whole Party I mean the contrivers abettors and promoters of and actors in that most unchristian and inhumane Conspiracy and Rebellion against the late King and ended it with a quorum pars magna fui of which company I my self made a great part which would have become him much better speaking of sins inconsistent with a true faith then the Harangue he made against drunkenness and swearing and Atheism and profaneness and loosness of life without saying any thing at all against Hypocrisie or lying or standering or pride or malice or covetousness or sedition or rebellion as if those sins were not inconsistent with true faith as well or as much as the former But those he knew were thought to be the sins of those of the Kings and these of those of his own party as if our sins and not theirs and consequently we and not they the Kings and not the Parliaments Party had been the cause of that unnatural War and consequently of all those horrible mischiefs that were done in it together with all the dismal consequences and effects of it and so indeed in a late Book of his he is not afraid nor ashamed to tell us in plain terms But this Sermon of his was made it seems before he was convinced he had sinned in incouraging so many thousands as he saith he did to the War against the King so that the time of his Recantation was not yet come though I presume he stayed not so long before he sued out his Pardon Well but when the time was come when he thought fit to publish that Paper which he calls a Recantation which was eight or nine years after he had Preached the aforesaid Sermon before the King let us see what manner of Recantation it was or whether it was such a one as can make an impartial and judicious peruser of it believe without doubting that it is so sincere as an ingenuous and voluntary Recantation ought to be For besides the tardiness of its coming forth which I noted before and which argues some other motive besides conviction of conscience for the publishing of it it is farther observable First That the wording of it wants that clearness and plainness which an ingenuous Recantation ought to have and Secondly That it is so clog'd and restrained and limited and shackled as it were with such and so many exceptions and conditions and proviso's that such a muddy-brain'd man as I am cannot tell what to make of it And first as to the want of clearness in the wording of it when he speaks of all he pretends to Recant in that paper he doth not say I profess my repentance that ever I held it but that ever I published it he might have said as well and perhaps as truly I am sorry that Bishop Morley's collection of so many false and pernicious Aphorisms out of that Book hath made me profess my repentance for the publishing of them Howsoever it is not his professing his repentance for the publishing of them can prove he repents the holding of them or that he is not still of the same judgment because though he be so it is not safe for him to profess himself to be so every 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is not a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 there is a difference betwixt times and seasons that may be safe or seasonable to be said or done or written and published at one time that can be neither seasonable nor safe at another So that we cannot conclude Mr. Baxter to be of any other mind now than he was before from his saying that he is sorry no nor from his being sorry indeed that he had formerly declared his judgment as he did Again as the want of clearness and plainness in the wording of that pretended Recantation may make the sincerity so the clogging of it with so many proviso's may make the ingenuity thereof to be suspected as if it had been extorted and not voluntary For it looks as if he that makes it were afraid he had overshot himself and said too much or might be thought by those of his own Party to have said too much in that little he had said before and therefore he adds the subsequent proviso's which if what he had declared before was real and sincere are all of them needless and impertinent and worse than needless and impertinent if he means to limit and restrain what he said before by them as he seems to do especially by the first and last of them For as in the first of those Proviso's he tells us he doth not reverse all the matter of that Book which he told us before he did Recant and that not only for some by-passages in it but in respect of the very scope of it so in the last of those Proviso's he protests against the judgment of Posterity which all sincere and ingenuous Writers do usually appeal unto as likewise against the judgment of all others that were not of the same time and place he should have said of the same Party and Perswasion also as to the censuring either of that Book of his or the revocation of it as being ignorant of the true causes of them both and then concludes that these things provided viz. if he may be allowed to except as much of the matter of the Book he pretends to Recant from being reversed as he pleaseth and upon condition that neither the Book nor the Recantation of it be censured by any but by whom he pleaseth he did vouchsafe to publish that Paper which he would have taken for a Recantation to which aforesaid Proviso's I wonder he did not
Microscope We are not to be judged by consequences No such consequence in the case An unlimited lawfull Monarchy in what sense Mr. B 's Governours some limited some unlimited If he means limited by men the consequence is avoided If he means limited by God The consequence falls upon himself All Governours limited by God de facto as well as de jure An expedient to help Mr. B. out of his own pit His Governours de facto unlimited what His self contradiction set home if he means limited by God If he mean limited by men his charge against the Bishop falls Mr. B 's Ingenuity in shuffling in one Proposition instead of another His design to make the Bishop odious His strange Logick His calumny cleared An address to the main Question The Aphorism in question This Aphorism the foundation of his Holy Common-wealth This Aphorism of his charged with falshood Three things premised Of Paternal Government * Vide His Apology for the Nonconformists Ministry p. 138. Adam the first Governour unlimited Cain the first Rebel Noah the first Monarch after the floud An account of Government after the confusion of languages Vnlimited Monarchy most ancient Political Monarchy as ours is better than Despotical Mr. B 's opinion of unlimited Governours false and dangerous Vnlimited Governours not Tyrants because unlimited Two sorts of Tyrants Cromwell in both senses a Tyrant Several unlimited Monarchs no Tyrants in either sense Mr. B 's meaning perhaps that all Governours ought de jure to be limited No obligation that all Government should be so limited by any law 1. Not by the positive law of God 2 Not by the law of nature 3. Not by the law of Nations The King never dies how to be understood The consequence driven home Conquerours in a just war unlimited Instances out of Scripture The like Case supposed betwixt our King and the Algerines Whether aconquered people may after submission free themselves by force Mr. B. saith I. The prophet Jeremy of another judgment 2 Chron. 3. 13. Jerem. 5. 2. Zedekiah 's casting off the yoke of the king of Babylon called Rebellion and punished as such Witnessed by the prophet Ezekiel Their deliverance at last from the Babylonish captivity was not by force of Arms. As neither was that from the Egyptian bondage The reason of this to give no countenance to rebellion What a Tyrant is in Mr. B 's notion A Governour 's being unlimited no hindrance to his Right A lawfull Governour 's being a Tyrant doth not forfeit his Right The Proposition to be proved Several arguments to prove it The 1. Argument The 2. Argument from Scripture Affirmatively Obedience to Nero himself strictly commanded And that when Christians under his actual persecution Why S. Peter and S. Paul made choice of to preach up obedience The 3. Argument from the practice of the Primitive Christians Whilst under Heathen and Tyrant Princes Their non-resistance not for want of power c. But cut of conscience to God The ten Tribes revolt from Rehoboam examined * 1 Kings 12. 24 Suppose what they did might be by special Commission The like cases of Abraham Of the Israelites Of Phineas Those cases applied No warrant hence for us to do the like The Revolt sinfull against the fifth Commandment The case betwixt a King and his Subjects the same as betwixt a father and his children Or betwixt a Master and his servants 1 Pet. a. 18. No such special commission for the Revolt as won supposed Jeroboam 's case stated 1 Kings 11. 31. His distrust and impatience How he made Israel to sin David 's case alike and his different behaviour * 1 Sam. 26. 8 9 c. The ground of Jeroboam 's pretence His artifice to discontent the people Absalom 's rebellion raised by the same artifice Psalm 78. 73. Jeroboam 's pretence inquired into No mention of a yoke in Solomon ' s. reign The great Tribute was a Levy of men And that not of the children of Israel People apt to grow weary of their happiness In what sense some men and works are called good The Revolt is called Rebellion 1 Kings 12. 19. 2 Chron. 10 19. Two arguments to justifie the revolt 1 Kings 12. 24. 2 Chro. 11. 4. The Answer in general God's foretelling a thing to be done is not the cause of doing it The like case of Hazael c. The evil of sin from God onely by permission The evil of punishment is from God The case of Jehu and Jeroboam unlike 2 Kings 9. 6 7. The general rule to be followed unless there be a special dispensation To obey actively and passively what Papists and Presbyterians agree in the doctrine of resisting Kings The objection From the law of Nature From their inability to resist And that the precepts of not resisting were temporary The Answer That to think so is no less than blasphemy Christians because Christians to be the best of Subjects The Blasphemy made out Subjects obliged in Conscience A not able saying of Grotius The judgment of the Church of England in the case Where the Churches judgment to be found Her judgment subscribed to by all that are ordained Mr. Calamy 's frank subscription Why the judgment of our Church quoted What Mr. B 's meaning that Tyrants have no right to their governments It is not that they have no right to govern tyrannically Vid. his Tract of obedience to rulers and howfar resistance is unlawfull à pag 346. ad pag. 375. of his holy common-wealth Vid. ibidem à p. 375. ad p. 456. But that they have no right to govern at all Mr. Hobb 's opinion and Mr. Baxter 's alike exploded by the Bishop Lawfull Sovereigns not to be resisted According to the first institution of Kings by Samuel Samuel and St. Paul c. blasphemed as defiers of God and man Mr. B 's Jugling Some Instances of it Nero 's cruelties Pone Tigellinum tadi lucebis in illâ Quâ stantes ardent qui fixo gutture fumant Juven Satyr St. Paul under the same charge of Mr. B. with the Bishop The primitive Christians fools in Mr. B 's opinion Mr. B 's kindness to the Novatians â—â—â—ence and yet they for Bishops The Doctrine of non-resistance no flattery to Kings as Mr. B. calls it Kings accountable to God and punished by him Mr. B 's absurd conclusion set forth by a like instance Subjects advantage from wrongfull sufferings The Hobbists censured on the one hand The Papists and Sectaries on the other As Enemies to God Enemies to Kings And enemies to all subjects The Bishop's justification of his exception against Mr. B 's Aphorism And his Vindication of himself from being a defier c. and an enemy to God c. Rom. 13. for the unlawfulness of resisting rescued The Senate of Rome had part of the Sovereignty with Nero. H. C. p. 353. Mr. B 's exception against our Translation H. C. p. 352. Our Translation vindicated Mr. B. no great Critick in the Greek *
that a free People or a People that were sui juris At their own disposal and under no Government at all if there were ever such a people in the World might not voluntarily and lawfully submit themselves to the Government of one or more Governours without any antecedent Pact or Covenant to limit him or them in his or their Government and for proof of this he must produce some universal binding Law to the contrary which untill he can doe I do and must still affirm that unlimited Governours supposing them to be no Usurpers and that they do not reign tyrannically as certainly there be some that do not are not all of them Tyrants because they are unlimited or such as have no right to their Governments upon that account onely and consequently that this Aphorism of Mr. Baxter's which affirms the contrary is false and would be Treason and justly punishable as Treason if it were affirmed by a Subject of a Despotical Prince or Sovereign such as all Kings at first were and such as all Kings in the East and West Indies and in Africk and some in Europe as the Turk and Muscovite and French King are at this day Whereunto may be added the unlimited Right and Title which Conquerours have over those they have conquered I mean such Conquerours as by a just War are become Lords and Masters of the lives and fortunes of those they have subdued whether they be Rebels or Enemies and therefore as they may justly save the lives of as many or as few as they please so and much more so may they justly govern those whose lives they have saved as they think fit and most for their own advantage as the Israelites did the Gibeonites making them Hewers of Wood and drawers of Water that is by employing them in all manner of drudgery and servile works And thus and worse than thus David did to the Ammonites even to all the people of the cities of Ammon saith the Text which he had conquered putting them under sawes and harrows of iron and making them pass through the Brick-kilns because they had violated the jus Gentium or the law of Nations by the barbarous usage of his Ambassadours whom out of kindness he had sent unto them And yet which is observable the Ammonites were none of those Nations which God had devoted to destruction and commanded the Israelites to make war upon but it was a War the Ammonites had justly drawn upon themselves with the sad and severe effects of it And what if our King having been so long and so continuedly and so outragiously injured and provoked by the Algerines robbing and pillaging of his Ships and inslaving and murthering of his Subjects should make War upon them and by God's blessing vanquish and subdue them making himself Master of all they have both of strength and wealth both by Sea and Land and of that den of Thieves it self I mean the City of Argiers might he not if he would justly destroy them all or if he thought it better for himself or more for his own Interest sell them all for slaves or use them all as slaves to tugg at the Oar all their life long in their own Galleys or to dig in Mines and Quarries or to mend high ways or to put them to any other toilsome or sordid labour and to have nothing for it but brown Bisket and water for their food and for their clothing any thing that will but cover their nakedness and all this while to be beaten as often and as much as their Task-masters shall think fit to inflict it This would be very hard usage you will say but no harder than that wherewith they have used others nor no harder than a Conquerour may most justly inflict on such inhumane Monsters and such profest Enemies of all mankind as they are Howsoever I hope Mr. Baxter will not deny such a Conquerour to be an unlimited Governour of those whom he hath so conquered and yet to have a just right and Title to his unlimited Government as every Master hath likewise over his slaves whether they be born in his house or bought with his money without capitulating with them before-hand how he shall govern them or how they will be governed by him But may not a People though conquered in a just War and deservedly made and used as slaves and Vassals by the Conquerour doe what they can to free themselves from that slavery and servitude Mr. Baxter thinks they may as appears by what he saith Page 193 of his Holy-Commonwealth where he tells us that Dominatio that is in his sense any unlimited Government is penal to the Subjects and they may escape it if they can yea though they have submitted themselves to such a servitude and consequently à fortiori By stronger reason they may doe what they can to free themselves from it if they be forced by a Conquerour to submit to it But this was not the judgment or doctrine of the Prophet Jeremy for Nebuchadnezzar had no right or title but that of Conquest to that unlimited power he exercised over the Jews by making what Viceroys he pleased to govern them and by imposing and exacting what tribute he pleased from them and by forcing their King his Vassal to take an Oath of Allegeance to him which is called the Oath of God and for the breaking whereof Zedechiah whom Nebuchadnezzar after he had deposed Jehoiachim made his Viceroy under him seeking to free himself and the people from that bondage or unlimited power which the King of Babylon exercised over them is by God himself declared to be a Rebel and his endeavouring to cast off that unlimited yoke is called Rebellion and Rebellion it could not be unless it had been a rising up against a rightfull Sovereign and therefore as God called it a Rebellion so he punish'd it as a Rebellion by giving up Jerusalem and Zedechiah himself into the hands of him against whom he had rebelled who after he had slain his Children before his eyes he presently caused them to be put out that the slaughter of his Children might be the last thing he should ever see and then carried him captive unto Babylon and kept him in a dungeon till he died he caused likewise the walls of Jerusalem to be broken down and the House of God it self that glorious fabrick that wonder of the World to be destroyed and all the Nobility Clergy Gentry and Artificers of the Nation to be carried away captive also together with all the wealth and whatsoever was worth the carrying away leaving nothing but some of the poorer sort of labouring People to dress and till the ground and to keep it from being overrun with wild beasts So that all the Jews got by this and their former Rebellion against the King of Assyria was but the making of their yoke harder to be born and heavier than it was before as