this argument be justify'd and victorious Rebels may believe they are carrying on the work of the Lord. It may be here worth noting how Honorius I. who was Pope above an hundred years before Zachary did reprove the Bishops beyond the Po who were earnest with the Nobility to set up Arioaldus in the place of Adoevaldus King of Italy against their oath of allegiance and summon them to appear with their Cause before him The Popes it seems yet had not discover'd that they had power to dispense with oaths and cancell the obligation of that duty of submission to Kings which St. Peter had laid upon all Christians It was not in those days revealed that that Text Thou hast put all things under his feet was meant of the Pope and the better to accommodate it to his Holiness that we are to understand by the beasts of the field Men by the fowl of the air Angels by the fish of the sea Souls in Purgatory All put under the Pope's feet Now as to Hildebrand though he was a publisher of new Doctrines yet there will be no reason to believe he brought them down from Heaven if we may credit the account of his morals which is given by his Contemporaries Cardinal Benno taxes him with all the deadly sins each of which upon the commission of it does immediately put a man out of a state of salvation With murthers rapine adultery and constant practice of the Black-art Hildebrand however passes always with Bellarmine for a Saint and Baronius recommends his example to the imitation of Paul V. as the most excellent person that ever sate in the Papal Chair And they have no names bad enough to bestow upon Benno Both of them also insinuate the probability of the Book being written by a Lutheran which goes under Benno's name but Baronius was very unlucky in his conjecture that Reinerus Reineccius was the Father of this supposed spurious Piece when near 50 years before the Edition of Reineccius the Life of Hildebrand by Benno was publisht among the Tracts in the Book entitled Fasciculus rerum expetendarum ac fugiendarum It is the main business of these two Learned Men in their voluminous Works to ascribe uncontrollable I may say boundless power to the Bishops of Rome and to maintain their right in the most unconscionable claims to a sovereignty over Emperours and Kings otherwise Bellarmine would never have vented it for truth that the Pope can change the nature of things and that if falling into errour he should command vice and forbid vertue the Church would be bound to believe vertue to be vice and vice to be vertue It being strange that in the same period he supposes the Pope can err he should assign such a power to him as by reason of its inconsistency with the perfections of the Divine Nature we may not ascribe to the Almighty God himself Otherwise Baronius would not have pick'd out of the whole Catalogue of the Popes Gregory VII and Alexander the III. as Patterns for Paul V. to govern himself by At the later of whose Feet Friderick Barbarossa lying prostrate he trampled upon his Neck and began to sing that of David thou shalt goe upon the Asp and Basilisc And to the Emperour who his Spirits boiling within him said this submission is made not to thee but to Peter the angry Pope pressing harder with his Foot did reply both to me and to Peter And Hildebrand the other Pope recommended to Paul V. Henry IV. upbraids with having by money got favour by favour got the sword by the sword placed himself in the seat of Peace and when in the seat of Peace banisht Peace from it Gregory could not but confess himself advanced by violent hands into St. Peter's Chair In which Chair he did dictate or decree That his name alone should be rehearsed in the Churches That he has power to depose Emperours That he ought to be judged by no man That he can absolve Subjects from their allegiance to unjust Princes That he should give himself the title of Christ's Vicar and yet make his Kingdom to be of this World and by his Decrees set aside the plain Precepts of Christ that he should pretend to be the Successour of St. Peter and teach Doctrines directly contrary to those of St. Peter In which Chair he thunder'd out Curses against the Emperours Kings Princes Bishops and demanded Tribute almost of every Kingdom in Europe Engaging them in bloudy Wars and setting their Subjects loose from their duty and obedience He contrived an Oath in such a form to be imposed upon Kings as no honest man could take it Kings are to swear faithfully to observe whatsoever the Pope shall command them Bellarmine's Doctrine truly agrees with this Oath For if the Pope should command a Prince to murther an hundred of his innocent Subjects he was bound to believe it would be a vertue so to doe But the very rage of this fierce and haughty man discharged its self chiefly upon Henry IV. whom he excommunicated four times deposed him unheard and unconvicted and gave his Kingdom to Rodulphus And after a terrible journey in the depth of a severe Winter made him without all his Attendants and stript of his Royal Robes to wait barefoot and fasting three whole days before he would admit him but into his presence he all the time caressing his Mistris in the Castle at Canusium Insomuch as in his own Letter to the Germans upon this occasion he acquaints them that all wonder'd at the strange hardness of his heart and some cryed out of him as not proceeding with the gravity of Apostolic severity but with the cruelty of brutish Tyranny The Church of Liege farther inform us they had read that Hildebrand the onely Pope who hath added to the holy Canons had commanded the Marchioness Mawd as the condition of the forgiveness of her sins to subdue Henry the Emperour but whence say they is this new Authority by which impunity of the sins past and licence for those which shall be hereafter is offer'd to the guilty without confession and repentance These Proceedings do indeed suppose God to have committed to the Pope a power not onely of determining disputable points but as Benedict tells Paul V. of making new Creeds So that is was judiciously observ'd by Aventinus that Hildebrand did absolve men not from their sins but from the Law and Sacraments of Christ undermine the Peace and Piety of our Religion raise War and Seditions indulge Whoredom Murther Perjuries Perfidiousness Rapines Fire and to hide his Ambition did not onely devise Fables corrupt Annals pervert Records but also adulterate the heavenly Oracles Forcing the Divine Writings to serve his Lust by false glosses put upon them And the Councils of Mentz Brixia and Wormes did great service to Christianity and pursued truly the interest of the Church when they deposed
to the bitterness of death it self And his and their examples have been faithfully copied out by the Apostolic Church in the lives of its pious Confessours and glorious Martyrs Subjection is a duty than which there hardly is any oftner repeated in the Christian Law so as we cannot plead ignorance of it it is pressed with such evidence of reason that cuts off all pretences of evading it it is set down in such plain easie and full expressions as that there can be no colour to doubt about the right understanding of it The holy Scripture gives permission no more to the People collected into one body to rebell than it does to each of them by himself singly considered Every Christian in all circumstances is required to conform to the Laws of the Supreme Authority if they have no repugnancy to God's Laws and to suffer patiently where obedience would be a sin Now there being in our Religion a general Precept to be subject to our Governours without one exception to it what will the Sons of disobedience urge in excuse of themselves will they say that the Evangelical Precepts were not to bind perpetually and that our obligation to observe them is already ceased If it be then we have done with our Religion and our Bibles and may lay them both aside It is most certain that by the same argument they would take off their obligation to this plain Christian Duty they may excuse themselves from their obligation to all the rest Will they plead that the Gospel is not a perfect rule of duty and that the inspired Writers did not foresee and provide for all cases and that therefore it is but reasonable there should be a supplement of new Doctrines and Rules where the Gospel has been defective But is not this rank Popery do we not justly condemn the Church of Rome for taking upon her to make new Articles of Faith is not this to incur the guilt of St. Paul's Anathema which shall pass upon whosoever preaches another Doctrine Or will they say that the general Laws of the Gospel bind but sometimes and the universal Rules hold onely in particular cases That is notwithstanding St. Paul does lay a strict injunction upon every Soul to be subject to the Higher Powers yet that some ought to be excepted But is not this the way to destroy all the Laws of the Christian Religion since upon the same ground they dispense with one Law of Christ they may dispense with as many as they please Is not this to open a gap to all impiety and looseness yet to these miserable shifts must the Advocates of Rebellion be driven So it was the fate of our unhappy Nation to run it self into a most unnatural and bloudy Rebellion by a set of distinctions that had not the least footstep in the Christian Religion By distinctions between a power radically limited and not onely in the use and exercise of it between a moral power to resist and an authoritative and civil power between resistence of the King himself and of his Agents and Officers between resistence positive and active negative and passive between jus regiminis usurpationis according to God's Law and Man's Law between resistence of the King's Power and of his Will between fighting against the Magistrate and against the Man And the same ill cause which put men upon inventing distinctions that would in no wise agree with the Faith of Christ and to which the Primitive Christians were strangers did lay a necessity on them to doe violence to the holy Scriptures and to extort senses out of them different from their plain meaning Thus to evade this Text of St. Peter Submit your selves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake whether it be to the King as supreme or to Governours c. Jo. Goodwin in his defence of the horrible Sentence against the late King of glorious memory tells us That the supremacy here asserted unto the King is not over the whole body of his People but onely over inferiour Officers Now that the King should be supreme as St. Peter declares and yet subject as our Authour asserts to the whole body of the People is a matter as hard to make out as it is to reconcile contradictions And it is manifest that St. Peter requiring submission expresly first to the King as supreme then to Governours as under him does extend this Precept to others besides the inferiour Officers that is to the People It must be granted that as it is absurd speech to say he who is the supreme Ruler can have any person not subject to him in his own Dominions so also that in this Apostolical injunction to submit to the King there is no more a reservation made for the whole body of the People to resist than for under Officers no more for under Officers than for private Men. However Junius Brutus to escape the force of the same Text puts a gloss upon it contradictory to that of our other Authour he attributing the right to resist to inferiour Officers which was given before to the body of the People For he declares that these exhortations of St. Peter and St. Paul to submission are directed to private persons who by his confessions have no other remedy than prayers and patience but that the inferiour Magistrates not onely may but are in duty bound to resist a Tyrant But in finding out expedients to fence against direct Precepts of Scripture it may be observ'd that his Holiness has been before this sort of men and set them a pattern from this very Text. For Innocent III. who sainted Thomas à Becket for Sedition and Treason in a Letter to Henry Emperour of Constantinople puts a pleasant interpretation upon the place viz. that these words Submit your selves to every ordinance of man whether to the King are to be understood of St. Peter himself for that he did write to his own Subjects and that to those words to the King as supreme is to be added this limitation intemporals because in matters spiritual the Pope is above him Which is to say either that St. Peter by the King did mean the Pope or that St. Peter when he taught Christians the duty of subjection to the King unhappily forgot to put in a clause or proviso to secure the Supremacy of his Successours over the Civil Power Insomuch as the Doctrine of the lawfulness of resistence to the Supreme Powers must be laid aside for an unchristian opinion which can never be maintained unless we will suppose a right in the Pope or some other party of men to interpret the Scriptures contrary to the manifest sense of the words and either to add to or take from them such passages as may sute with their present turn And it always holds true with respect to the Sovereign Power in any Countrey what was said by Judge Creshald both like a pious Christian and an able Lawyer concerning the
Royal Authority in our own Nation That the Jura Regalia of our Kings are holden of Heaven and cannot for any cause escheat to their Subjects nor they for any cause make any positive or actual forcible resistence against them but that we ought to yield to them passive obedience by suffering the punishment albeit their commands should be against the Divine Law And that in such case arma nostra sunt preces nostrae nec possumus nec debemus aliter resistere for who can lift up his hand against the Lord 's Anointed and be guiltless 2. That this command to be subject to the Higher Powers is enforced by the Holy Writers with divers strong and clear reasons 1. Because the Powers are ordained of God so that he who resists them resists the Ordinance of God Which reason will carry a perpetual obligation along with it for if it be always our duty submit to the Ordinances of God then it will ever be a sin to resist the Higher Powers And so long as God has a title to our obedience so long subjection to his chief Minister will be our duty Now if this Doctrine of St. Paul be true then that Doctrine must be false that all power being originally from the People where the Powers exceed the just bounds of their Authority they may be call'd to account for it and that Kings not performing their duty the Subjects are released from theirs For we may observe that though the Roman Emperours rarely came to their Crowns by right of succession but receiv'd them from the hands of the Senate or their Souldiers yet the Apostle acknowledges them to rule by God's appointment and forbids therefore all resistence utterly If then we will but grant what with no reason we can deny that Christian Kings have as good titles as Heathen Emperours had we must be bound to make the Apostle's inferences also that they are ordained by God and that it is our duty ever to submit to them So that notwithstanding the power had first been conferr'd by the People yet they cannot resume it when they please and make the Supreme Authority accountable to them 2. We are required to submit our selves to every ordinance of Man for the Lord's sake i. e. for the sake and honour of the Lord's Religion upon which some Seducers had brought a great scandal by teaching that it sets men at liberty from the obligation of being subject to Authority Neither if it was askt What men those were who crept among the Christians and would have infected them with such pernicious Principles should we be much surprized and at a loss to find an answer and to shew what necessity the Apostle had to issue forth so early a prohibition against resistence of the Higher Powers since a little before that time Judas Galilaeus founded a Sect of which probably were those Galileans whose bloud Pilate had mingled with their Sacrifice who did chuse to suffer the most cruel torments that could be devised rather than they would acknowledge any mortal man to be their Lord and Prince And Rebellion and Sedition in those days were crimes whereof the Jews were frequently guilty So that by our submission we shall assert and maintain the just credit of the Christian Religion which is meek and peaceable and put to silence the ignorance of foolish men It being it seems in the judgment of St. Peter a mark both of ignorance and folly to think the Religion of Jesus did allow its Professours in any rebellious practice against their Governours 3. We are to be subject because the Magistrate is the Minister of God to us for good The benefits and blessings of government are so necessary to our well-being in the World that as Mankind could not subsist without them so neither can any Government subsist without it be allow'd that the Supreme Power be uncontrollable And albeit it must be confest that it is a heavy judgment upon a Nation for the Rulers thereof by lust and ambition pusht on to exercise tyranny over it yet it will be evident to them who have been either conversant in the Histories of times past or registred the experiences of their own that the evils which proceed from oppression by our Governours bear no proportion to the miseries and calamities which naturally spring from Rebellion and Civil Wars Where the bounds between right and wrong are all levell'd and the lives liberties and properties of Men brought under the Arbitrary Power of the longer Sword where Beggars and Servants ride on Horseback and Princes and Masters go on foot where nothing appears but rapins ruins outrages and devastations Houses plunder'd Towns fired whole Countreys laid waste and desolate and the Inhabitants slain or sled or confined to dark and noisome Prisons where the Father falls by the sword of his own Son the Son by the hand of his Brother and they who were closely united by neighbourhood friendship bloud and the profession of the same Religion forgetting all these sacred tyes do in a most unnatural and salvage manner rip up and let out the Bowels of one another So true is it that the King's Prerogative doth in his own hand become a Sceptre to protect his Subjects from ruine but in the hands of the Subjects becomes many times Spears sticking in their own sides and as Spades to dig their own graves the sooner for death 3. We must needs be subject not onely for wrath but also for conscience sake That is not onely for fear of punishment from those in Authority but from the sense of subjection being a duty which God has laid on us So that the love of God as well as apprehensions of the Magistrate's displeasure do keep the Christian Man firm to his resolutions of not lifting up his hand against the Sovereign Powers And from this reason of our obligation to submit to Authority we may wipe off that notorious scandal which has been fastn'd on the Primitive Christians by Bellarmine and others namely that therefore they were subject to the Supreme Powers because they were not strong enough to resist them as if they had wanted the power onely but not the will to rise up against them and lay them aside Which charge as it always was not true in matter of fact since there be instances when the Christians had Forces enough to have made a dangerous resistence if their Consciences would have granted them a licence to rebell so it is altogether beside the grounds of their dutifull and humble deportment which did proceed not from the dread of the Emperours whom they were too weak to oppose but from the certain knowledge they had that resistence would be a violation of the Laws of their holy Religion The truth is Bellarmine gives out that the reason why Christians did not depose Nero Diocletian Julian Valens and others was not because they were destitute of a right but of the power to doe it that
can the King have better hold of them by any Oath they shall please themselves to take since that Oath also according to the doctrine of the Decree would become unlawfull and so cease to bind them if it should happen once to be condemn'd by one of the Breves or Bulls of the Pope Moreover though these Jesuits do profess yet indeed they do not exhibit as much obedience to the King as other Popish Subjects do to their Prince for it is well known that they of the Gallican Church do pay obedience to the Laws and Edicts of their King even against his Holiness's Bulls and sixty Doctours also of the Sorbon have declared that the English Subjects of the Roman Persuasion may lawfully and safely take the Oath of Allegiance which this Consult of Jesuits has condemned But to doe the Reverend Fathers of that Order right it must be confess'd that notwithstanding all the affronts they have put upon Kings they can grosly flatter them when it will serve the interest of their Society Of which egregious flattery the French Jesuits in their College at Paris founded by the Bishop of Clermont have given a very late instance Where in the place of their old Inscription Collegium Claromontanum Jesu they have put up this Collegium Ludovici Magni wiping out at once the names both of their Founder and Saviour What a change will Interest make in the Opinions and Practices of Men Pope Hildebrand to whose dictates the Jesuits pay most religious respect declares Kings to be the Priests Servants and even inferiour to the Exorcist but these pious Fathers did not think they had given testimony sufficient of their loyalty till they had preferr'd their King before Jesus Christ And having thus proved that all resistence to the Supreme Authority is unlawfull and that the Popes were the first abettours of it in the Christian Church by pretended Arguments from Scripture I come 2. To shew with what care impartiality and patience the good Christian searches into the grounds and causes of his Persuasion that the commands of Authority are sinfull before he refuses to pay obedience to them No power on Earth can make him withdraw his obedience to God nor any danger awe him into the doing of that which he believes to be a sin Where Man's Laws stand in opposition to God's Law if it may be done without detriment to his Religion he accepts the benefit of Christ's Licence given to his Disciples and makes his escape by flying from one City to another or else he patiently submits to the penalty decreed to be inflicted upon him for his conscientious refusal But because men have refused to conform to the Laws of the Government when there has been nothing in them repugnant to the Will of God and have been justly punished for their disobedience at the same time they have thought themselves Martyrs for the Cause of Christ and since on the one hand it is most unhappy for them to suffer for their mistakes and on the other of ill consequence to Governours that their Laws when just and expedient should not be duly observed therefore the man who has possest his Soul with patience does not run away with the first appearances of things as being prone to suspect the errour may lie rather in his understanding than in the Laws of his Superiours nor does he forbear to comply with the will of the Higher Powers till upon much consideration he becomes persuaded there can be no compliance without involving himself in sin And if a Law chance to be enacted the matter whereof may seem evil to him he does not hasten rashly into any conclusion but he imploys his patience his sincerity his prudence in all the proper methods to inform his judgment truly before he comes to a resolution how he must behave himself And in order to prosper in a work of such importance he begins it with hearty prayer to God to bless his undertaking and guide him into all truth Before he enters into the merits of the Cause it self he impartially enquires whether he be not carried into it by prejudice passion profit fame or some other secular end Whether he has not taken up this opinion of the unlawfulness of conformity to the Laws as well as many false ones by the prejudices of a disadvantagious education by having heard the Arguments read the Books and conversed with the Men onely who are of one side There being reason to believe that many of the Dissenters from our Church are mere strangers to all the constitutions of it They have rarely if ever been present all the time of Divine Service they have never seriously perused any one office of our Liturgy and fairly weighed what may be said for it They scarce can pretend to have read more leaves of the Book of Publick Prayers than of the Alcoran However these men separate from us because they have been taught to doe so and because their Friends do upon whom they have such a dependence as not to dare to displease them And in which course while they continue their most dangerous errours will be incurable He farther considers whether his present dissent does not proceed from his having had a known reputation in such a Party a long time and although he could now without any violence to his Conscience yet he is ashamed to retreat or whether it be not because he finds his opposition to the Government to be popular and he draws crowds after him of admirers or to be very profitable he gains a fair livelihood by it and should be at a loss for his subsistence did he not engage himself in the interests of the Dissenters Lastly He considers whether he doth pass judgment in the other cases which occur in his life with the same scrupulosity and tenderness he does in this for if he have with such art managed his Conscience that notwithstanding it's tenderness in the matter of Conformity it can allow him to live quietly in the known breach of any of the moral duties of Religion he has just reason to suspect his want of sincerity as to the causes for which he divides from the Church If notwithstanding his long refusal to join with us in our Common Prayers as stinting the Spirit and not tending to edification he yet can submit to the forms of solemnization of Marriage to gain a person with a great fortune and to legitimate his issue to inherit it and if after many years absence from our Churches and separation from our Communion as antichristian and unlawfull he yet can receive the holy Sacrament with us to qualify himself for an office or employment it will be obvious either that his Conscience is perversely instructed or that he is an hypocrite Now as none of the reasons before-mentioned can justify any Man's disobedience to Authority seeing they owe their rise to pride interest or passion so were such heads of enquiry duly poised in the balance and allow'd