it is no more than Common Honesty to stand to one's own Act and Deed But in the way of the Passive Doctrine to prostitute the Lives Liberties and Estates of the People of England to the Will of the Prince is Treason against the Realm and Higher Treason than the Highâ—Treason against the Prince For as Fortesâ—ue and the rest of the Lawyers â—ay the King was made for the Kingdom and not the Kingdom for the King And as Treason against the Realm is such as the King cannot pardon so it is such as an Actual King by Succession is capable of being guilty of as appears by several Acts of Parliament which I can shew to any Dabbler in our Government that understands it not He clenches his third Paragraph with a Fourth which follows in these words This is either true or all these who live upon a Continent and that are subject to the Conquests and Invasions of their Neighbours must be misâ—rable For though our Happy Scituation has exempted us for a whole Age from falling under any such Difficulties yet this is a Case that falls often out in all different States which are on the same Continent for if Subjects owe their natural Prince such an Obstinate Allegiance that neither Desertion nor Conqueâ—t can dissolve it then in what a miserable Condition must they be when they fall under the Power of their Enemy that never thinks himself secure of them but treats them still as Enemies till they swear Allegiance to him Now all the true Maxims of Government being such that they must tend to the Preservation and not to the Ruin of Mankind it is certain that all those are false which tend to the inevitable Destruction of Cities and Societies and therefore this of an indiffeasable Allegiance must be reckoned among these since the fatal Consequences that must attend upon it are evident and this is the Opinion in which all who have considered this matter either as Lawyers or Casuists do agree This is shifting the Scene for he knows that we are a World by our selves and have nothing to do with the Continent It is a Londlopeing Argument and till we are in the Condition of the Flanderkin Towns he need not urge us with their Practice and Example And he is wholly out of the way in every word he utters For we are not Deserted or Forsaken nor Conquered or Subdued nor under the Power of an Enemy nor treated as Enemies and cudgelled into an Oath of Allegiance nor ever will be If I were hired to write against the Oath of Allegiance I would use such Arguments as this is Are we in the Case of those that are Slaves under the Spaniard and Slaves under the French that often change their Master but never their Condition that are Prize and Retaken and Prize still Let him answer me to that If not why must our Vertue be taught us by their Necessity God help thâ—m my Soul pities their Case and I should not readily know what to do in it because I never considered it And perhaps it is like one of those wherein our Saviour forbids Forecast and would have no Man Premeditate but promises help at a dead Lift Dabitur in illâ Horâ But in all his Travels could he find no Copy for us to write after nor no Body to match us with but a Conquered People What then is become of our Thanksgiving Deliverance which God and Man have been told of If after all we are to be in the Condition of a Conquered People it is a Deliverance downstairs and our last State is worse than the First For we were not Conquered in King Iames's Time though we were in election to be so and though his Westminster-hall Red-coats had made a fair Progress in it And therefore I am sure neither King nor Parliament have reason to thank him for the Choice of this Argument When all is done as I said beâ—ore all Arguments that come from abroad are Foreign to Us. We live under Municipal Laws and Local Statutes and By-Laws that are Peculiar to this Empire And therefore if he had offered us the tenth part of an Argument fetch'd out of the Bowels of our own Laws we would have hearkn'd to him but as for his Stories from abroad he may even if he pleases carry them home again But I love to talk with his Maxims as I do the sight of an Ass who looks like Wisdom and Gravity and is not For Allegiance Defined by Convenience is much like Religion Defined by maintaining a Coach and Six However let us have his own words over again For if Subjects owe their Natural Prince such an Obstinate Allegiance that neither Desertion nor Conquest can dissolve it then in what a miserable Condition must they be when they fall under the Power of their Enemy that never thinks himself secure of them but treats them still as Enemies till they swear Allegiance to him Now I can tell him that Allegiance is so Obstinate a thing that neither Desertion nor Conquest nor any thing in the World but what is intrinsecal to it that is Breach of Covenant or Consent of both Parties can Dissolve it It is a Moral Duty and Heaven and Earth may pass away before Allegiance can pass away As for Desertion we must first know what it is before we can know whether it will affect our Allegiance A Souldier's Deserting and running away from his Colours we know but what is this Deserting a Crown or a Kingdom A Resignation Renunciation Cession accepted by the People is valid and they are words currant in our Law and the Prince being thereby Deposed Allegiance ceases But as for Desertion we must enquire further about it Did the King Desert Willingly or Unwillingly Did not his People Desert him first If so then for shame never say that King Iames Deserted but say that he was Deserted Well now we are coming to the Merits of the Cause Had the People Reason to forsake King Iames or no had he Forfeited had he broke his Allegiance first was He the Aggressor Yes He had made our Allegiance to him Impossible For we were by the Constitution Sworn Brethren Conjurati Fratres ad Defensionem Regis Regni and he had brought things to that pass that we must either part with our King or our Realm The keeping our Allegiance to King Iames's Person would have Perjured us for we owed a Higher Duty to our Country and Laws to which he was sworn as well as we But instead of the double Duty which lay upon him of observare observari facere of Keeping the Laws and Causing them to be kept he abridged our Common Law and Statutes into five Positions of a Dispensing Power After which I would never look upon a Statute-Book more but kept the Copy of that Compendious Law always in my Pocket to see whether it would outlast the Paper which fell in pieces at the Prince's coming Now an Allegiance to the Destruction
Parliament without which he had no more Right to them than the Prince of Wales now has In the mean time the Pulpits were the Ensurers of the King's Word and said it was like the Laws of the Mâ—des and Persians which Altered not And as for the Customs they Preached that he had a Natural Right to them for they had gotten the true Art of spelling all the Oppressions and Devildoms in the World out of the pregnant word King though it is impossible to fetch any more Power out of that word than just what the People of England have put into it What I write is in the Memory of Man It is true in Sweden the word King now of late signifies infinite Power in Denmark since the Force put upon the Senate it is Proclamation-Law in King Ioseph's Kingdom of Hungary it is doing of Justice in general or according to his young Discretion in France it is Will and Pleasure because it is and it is the Mouth-watering General Excise Standing Armies Levying Money All things This makes him a Powerful and a Formidable Enemy but it would be more formidable to have those Outlandish things come hither though it were to make another as Powerful Monarch here as the late Licensed Book of the State of England would fain have it I take it to be a Licensed Book because it was Published in the Gazetâ—e But I tell that Author it is impossible to have here in England such a brave thing as the French King is till we be first made such sorry things as the French Subjects are I have not forgot where I digressed and I say that by Experience Popish Tyranny is so far better than Protestant that Pâ—ople are more aware of it and sooner rid their hands of it We saw this so plainly in Powis-house that nothing more can be writ upon the Subject A Massâ—house devoted to Destruction was saved by the Inscription of my Lord Delamere's Name that it was provided for his Lodging But a Protestant Inscription will never save a Mass-house a second time I might descant upon his Calling in Providence to decide a Title which is to employ the Majesty of Heaven in Undersheriffry and the Woes he lays upon Non-swearers and their Fighting against God if they happen to be in the Wrong as I will swear they are But I will keep my Word because as I said he seems to recal his first Paragraph in his Second which begins in these following words But all this may look like a Pathetical aggravating the Matter unless it should appear to be well supported I go therefore in the next place to set before you those Reasons that seem convincing to me even though there were no more to be said for the present Settlement but that we have a Throne filled and a King and Queen in Possession From henceâ—orth therefore Rhetorick apart we must expect nothing but Reasons and convincing Reasons I shall take the pains of examining them one by one and find out if I can their Power of Conviction which I am afraid is like an Estate left in Diego's Will The First Reason which seems Convincing to him and sufficient for the Purpose is that we have a Throne filled and a King and Queen in Possession A Throne filled I think it is for it never yet held more than one Person at a time unless it were widened once in a Thousand Years by the Consent of the People I believe that a King and Queen in Possession at once or a King and Queen de Facto Together in Opposition to de Iure which the Scotch Parliament justly called a Villanous Distinction would have frighted even Coke himself the first Author that I know of that affected Distinction and much more would have frighted old Littleton out of whose Mouth there never came any thing else but Ung Dieu Ung Roy. We know a King alone comes from Heaven or a Queen alone comes from Heaven and either of them Fills a Iure-Divino Throne But to talk of Two in Possession together without first naming the true Cause of it which was the Good-will of the People who were perfectly free to have had either or neither or both is to talk of an utter Impossibility For here all their Schemes fail them all their Texts fail them and they cannot shew any such Pattern in the Mount Besides Possession even of a single Person is the worst Title in the World it is the Claim of a Disseysor an Intruder an Usurper and of Oliver who told the Fifth-Monarchy Man that he only kept Possession of the Throne till King Iesus came and then he was ready to Resign it to him The Pastoral seems to be aware of this and therefore immediately these words follow in the same Paragraph The bringing the State of the Question so low may seem at first view not to be of so much Advantage to Their Majesties Title but since I intend to carry the Matter further before I leave it I hope it may be no incongruous Method to begin at that which will take in the greatest Numbers since there is no Dispute in this that they are actually in Possession of the Throne that they protect us and that we by living under their Protection and enjoying the Benefit of it are therefore bound to make some Returns to them for it In my Life I never met with such a short-winded Author for he is perpetually sucking in his Breath and what he advances in the beginning of a Paragraph is presently recalled A Throne filled and a King and Queen in Possession was in his very last Period a Convincing Argument for this Settlement yea though nothing more were to be said for it whereby it was made such a self-sufficient Convincing Argument as rendred all others superfluous and needless And yet now in this Period he Blemishes his own convincing and self-sufficient Argument as if it might lower and disparage their Majesties Title and plainly confesses it to be purely Drag-net as that which will take in the greatest Numbers One Convincing Argument is as much as one Thousand and as the King has but one Plain Title which is the Gift of the People so there is but one plain Proof of it which is the Instrument of Conveyance of the Crown by both Houses which the King accepting of Confirmed the Thing For that is very true the King might have chose whether he would be King or no he could not be made so against his Will nor can any Man be forced to take a Trust. But after all this had passed in the Face of the Sun and been transacted by the Greatest Authority upon Earth I mean the English Community which as King Charles the First says Moulded this Government and made it what it is and consequently both at first erected the Office of a King and always disposed of the Crown as they found Cause and never did it upon more valuable Considerations than in their last just Choice I say
those Peaceable and sometimes Rusty Swords which Men wear by their Sides to prevent Injuries and to keep them off at a distance instead of going with their Hands tied behind them to invite them And the only way to preserve a Nation from Tyranny is to leave them their Hands as free as the Law has left them though they make no other use of them than a Dutchman does of his to put in his Pockets For when all is done Reputation is the Best sort of Power and Defends Men from Injuries without War and Bloodshed While Mens Hands are their own their Rights are their own and therefore all Tyrants use this Method in Destroying a Nation bind the Strong Man and then spoil his Goods first they employ their Passive Priests and then their Active Executioners So it was in France the Protestants were Dragoon'd by Passive and Slavish Principles long before St. Ruth came amongst them And so it was here this Nation was bound hand and foot by Passive Principles and laid upon the Wood and we all know that the Sacrificing Knife was always ready Armorum quâ—edam sunt tuitionis Pacis c. says Bracton the People of England have Weapons for keeping the Peace but our peaceful Clergy knew a better way and beat all our Weapons into Plowshares and Pruning-hooks and when Mr. Hunt and I endeavoured to restore them to their former lawful Shape and Use they said we had been down at the Forges of the Philistins and dealt with Jesuites and Dr. Pelling could shew some Pages which Mr. Hunt had plundered out of Doleman though I do verily believe what he told me that he had never seen the Book But thus they went on both in and out of the Pulpit to cheat us of our Sheriffs and Charters and of the whole Strength of the Nation and to enslave the very Minds and Consciences of Men by bringing down every free English Thought to the Obedience of a Tyrant and by flashing Hell Fire and Damnation in the Faces of all those that knew they might Defend themselves against Tyranny And so this Mighty Nation which was never Conquered before was at last upon the point of being Conquered I am ashamed to say it by a very small Force not the ten Thousandth part of the Dutch Force even by Phantomes and Thebaean Legions But would not any Man who was a Lover of his Countrey venture his Life upon a Rescue in such a Case and indeavour to Unpinion Old England and assert his Countrey-men that Liberty to which they were Born No Man that understood the Pious Fraud though at the same time he understood his own Danger in discovering it could endure to see Chains and Fetters thus treacherously put upon his Countrey under pretence of Religion as they put them upon Men in the Inquisition for their Souls Health For if we are to love our Neighbour as our Self our Countrey is so great a Neighbour and has so many Millions of Neighbours in it that it ought be loved so many times better than one's self And if a Man should fall in such a Cause and lay down his Life for so great a Good seeing he must die sometime or another for nothing he makes Earnings of Mortality And though his Endeavours should want the desired Success provided he did his true Endeavour for I grant that wishing well in all Cases is no more than dreaming well it affords him greater Satisfaction than any thing in this World can For a Humane Soul is made so very large that nothing but the Love of God and of a Man's Country can fill it Thus far the very Reputation of Defending our Rights does Service to the Publick it checks and discourages Tyranny and is the Shore and Sea-dyke against Arbitrary Power and says to its proud Waves Hitherto shall ye come and no further There is no such Rule of Justice can be given to Mankind as to know their own for it makes other Men know it too But a Nation is lost when it is so Priestridden as to be preached out of all its Rights by the falsest Interpretations of Scripture that were ever yet put upon it since it was Penn'd and when they become so very Passive as the Addressing part of the Town of Northampton was who perjured themselves in surrendering their old Charter and prayed that in their new Charter they might not have the Choice of their own Magistrates because the King could chuse better for them than they could for themselves If I had been a Knave Minister of State at that time I would certainly have taken these Minors at their Word and part of their New Charter should have been to have Nurses sent them from above to have fed them with Spoons and held them out and turn'd them dry and treated them according to the State of Infancy which they professed and their Estates should have paid for it at the Year's end For the willing can have no Injury done them it 's all their own If Men bar their own Rights they are barr'd Well but must the Wise and Free and Great Men of a Nation be Slaves for Company with such Perfectionists in Church-Doctrine and lose all their Rights because the others give away theirs I think not Then is the time for all Honest Men to meditate the Actual Defence of their Rights when they see a Court and Church agreed to swallow them up For when they see Men murdered before their Faces there is nothing got by staying to be Eat last it is better to be eat First I know even by what I have found that that is the easier Death of the two And it was no Remote Case when my Lord Russell spoke of Defending Invaded Rights for he had survived all the Rights of the Nation long before he fell He saw that Parliaments were Libelled in all the Parish-Churches in England by the Declaration for the Dissolving the Oxford Parliament whereby we were plainly bid to take our Leave of Parliaments and so we did for that Reign He saw that the Choice of Sheriffs was ravished from the City of London and the True Sheriffs durst not Try their Cause but let it fall One of them is alive to witness what I say He saw plainly that this was intended for the Destruction of such Great Men as himself by pack'd Juries For the Papists and their wretched Adherents neither feared nor cared for Juries as to themselves being under the Protection of Noli Prosequi's and Affidavit-men but they thirsted for Blood This the State-Interpreter of those Times Sir Roger Lestrange told us openly in his Observators was the meaning of that Point of gaining the Sheriffs I know he will thank me for not quoting his words for they are Bloody ones That Great Man saw likewise a parcel of Traitorous Lords who under pretence of being Prisoners had taken the Tower and had raised so many Batteries against the City that the Lord Arundel of Warder wanted but one