thing of that nature but in such a fair and legal way as should satisfie all his loving Subjects The Duplys of the Divines of Aberdene p. 54. and p. 130 131. Whereupon Mr. Ley thus goes on viz. Wherein Wise men who judge of Consultations and Acts by their probable Effects and not unexpected Events cannot but highly commend His Majesty's Mildness and Clemency which we doubt not would condescend to your Requests for a removal of this great aggrievance if you would please to interpose your Mediations to so acceptable a purpose and upon our humble sute which in all submissive manner we tender to your Lordship and by you to the rest of your Reverend Order we hope you will do so since we have it upon his word His Royal Majesty's word which neither in Duty nor Discretion we may distrust that the Prelates were their greatest Friends i. e. of his Scottish Subjects their Councels were always Councels of Peace and their Solicitations vehement and earnest for granting those unexpected Favours which we were pleas'd to bestow upon our People The King 's large Declaration p. 420 Thus then the Royal Dispensation with the five Articles of Perth was at the Intercession of the Bishops tho' they knew the same Establish'd by Act of Parliament graciously afforded to his Scotish Subjects Those Articles of Perth related to various Religionary Matters viz The introducing of Private Baptism Communicating of the Sick Episcopal Confirmation Kneeling at the Communion and the observing such ancient Festivals as belong'd immediately to Christ and of which Doctor Heylin in his History of the Presbyterians having spoken saith That the King 's indulging the Scots in Dispensing with the Penal Laws about them was an Invitation to the Irish Papists to endeavour by armed force to Compass the King's Dispensation But how tenderly the Consciences of the Roman Catholics in Ireland were in the Reign of the Royal Martyr THEN Protected under the Wing of the Dispensative Power contrary to what the Dr. observ'd any one may see who will Consult my Lord Primate Bramhal's Replication to the Bishop of Chalcedon where he saith That the Earl of Strafford Lord Lieutenant of Ireland did commit much to my hands the Political Regiment of that Church for the space of Eight years In all that time let him name but one Roman Catholic that suffer'd either Death or Imprisonment or so much as a pecuniary Mulct of Twelve Pence for his Religion upon any Penal Statute if he can as I am sure he cannot c. And such was the acquiescence of the Populace and of the three Estates in the Penal Lawes there against the Roman Catholics being thus dead or asleep that in the Printed Articles of Impeachment against the then Lord Chancellor of Ireland and that Lord Primate thâ—…n Bishop of Derry and others of His Majesty's Publick Ministers of State exhibited by the Commons to the Lords in the year 1640. there is not a syllable of Complaint against those Lawes being so dispens'd with by Connivence Nor yet in the Printed Schedule of Grievances of that Kingdom voted in the House of Lords there to be transmitted to the Committee of the same House then attending in England to pursue Redresses for the same is there any representation of such Indulgence being any Gravamen nor yet of the great Figure the Irish Papists then made in the Government the Majority of the Parliament and of the Iudges and Lawyers then being such And pursuant to that Prince's Indulgence offer'd to the tender Consciences of his Subjects in the year 41. he was graciously pleas'd in the Treaty at Uxbridgâ—… to order his Commissioners who were such renown'd Confessors of the Church of England to make the first Royal offer there that freedom be left to all Persons of what Opinion soever in Matters of Ceremony and that all the Penalties of LAWS and Customs be SUSPENDED And the truth is since the Christian Religion did in its first settlement so rationally provide for its Propagation in the World and its bespeaking the favour of Princes by its enjoyning Subjection and Obedience to their Lawes not only for Wrath but Conscience sake and since that Principle of humane Lawes binding the Conscience which was so often and so publickly avow'd by that Prince and Arch-bishop Laud and Bishop Sanderson and the Divines of the Church of England in General is the surest guard to Princes Thrones and their Tribunals and that therefore 't is the Interest of the Prince and People to be more watchful in preserving that Principle then all the Iewels of the Crown or Walls of the Kingdom that Prince did therefore necessarily take Care to preserve and to perpetuate in some of his tender-Conscienced Subjects a continued Tenderness for his Lawes by his lawful Dispensative Power as particularly in the Case of his Scottish Subjects in taking off the Obligation of Obedience and of Conforming themselves to the Establish'd Lawes for such Dispensation intrinsecally notes the taking off such Obligation from the Persons dispens'd with And it is indeed a Solecism for any one to ask Indulgence from a Prince who owns the Law of the Land binding him in Conscience if he doth not think such Prince perswaded that his Power of granting it is a part of that LAW He was not ignorant of his Father's Aversion against the Penal Lawes in general and on which Account my Lord Bacon celebrating him saith As for Penal Lawes which lie as snares upon the Subjects and which were as a Nemo scit to King Henry 7. it yields a Revenue which will scarce pay for the Parchment of the King's Records at Westminster And religionary Penal Lawes requiring the greatest tenderness as he found when he came to the Government that the two most famous Puritan Divines Mr. Hildersham and Mr. Dod Men of great Probity and Learning had often been in his Father's time Pursuant to the Act for Uniformity disabled from Preaching and been re-inabled to it by particular Indulgence and as likewise Fuller tells us in his Church History that Bishop Williams when he was Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of England procured a Licence from King Iames under the Great Seal for Mr. Cotton the famous Independent to Preach notwithstanding his Non-Conformity so he in the same manner that his Royal Father did held the Reins of the Law loose in his hands as to those two other Non-Conformists beforemention'd The History of Mr. Hildersham's Life mentions that he was silenced in Iune A 1590 and restored again in Ianuary A. 1591. Again he was deprived and silenced April 24 A. 1605. for refusal of Subscription and Conformity and after some time again restored and was again Silenced in November A. 1611. by the King 's particular Command and on April 23. A. 1613. he was judicially admonished by the High Commission that saving the Catechizing of his own Family only he should not afterward Preach Catechize or use any of the Offices or Function of a Minister
Dispensative Power in the Reign of King Charles the First being extended to particular Persons but the hated Sibthorpe who in his Sermon of Apostolick Obedience as he call'd it doth speak of Mens being bound to observe the Lawes of the Land where they live except they will suffer as busie bodies or except they will have that inconvenience granted that the general Lawes or Government of a Nation must be dispens's withal according to the particular Conceit and Apprehension of every private Person whereout what Coleration of Heresy what Connivence at Errors what danger of Schisms in the Church and Factions in the State must necessarily follow c. and having mentioned the Liberty of a few erroneous Consciences bringing the Bondage of many regulated Commands he saith We must prefer the general before the particular and not let every one be loose to their List and Affection but all must be kept within the Lists of their Duty and Subjection And I but just now told you of that Prince's avowing that the Bishops advised him to the tenderness he shewed in dispensing with his Lawes to gratifie the pretended tenderness of the Consciences of some of his Scotish Subjects in that Conjunctâ—… â—…eand by which Dispensing one would have thought they might have been sufficiently antidoted against the strong Delusions of entring into War for Religion Oh that such thoughts had been then impress'd on their Minds as are contain'd in the General Demands of the Ministers and Professors of Aberdene p. 29. as I find them cited in the Book of Mr. Ley before-mention'd viz. There be other means more effectual for holding out of Popery and so of any unlawful innovation in which we ought to Confide more then in all the Vowes and Promises of Men yea also more then in all the United Forces of all the Subjects of this Land to wit diligent Preaching and Teaching of the Word frequent Prayer to God humbling of our selves before him and Amendment of our Lives and Conversations and Arming our selves against our Adversaries by diligent searching of the Scriptures whereby we may encrease in the knowledge of the Truth and in ability to defend it against the Enemies of it Oh that the Demagogues of those times had caus'd such words then to have been writ in our Churches or I might rather wish that those Heads of Parties had had themselves then hearts of flesh and that such tender words had been like a Law written there But the Urgentia imperii fata were upon us and that delicate use of Conscience that is in 2. Cor. 13. 5. call'd examen vel probatio nostrum ipsorum and whereby it resembled the best property of a beam in Scales namely its tenderness and turning with the least part of a grain was among the great Actors in that Rebellion quite laid aside and all the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. the weightier Matters of the Law did not stir their Consciences and the great Obligation of their Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy signify'd no more then the dust of the balance Tho they pretended to so nice a Tenderness about any thing that look'd like an Oath in familiar discourse and was not one as at the Saying in faith or in troth and so would seem to come under Solomon's Character of him that feareth an Oath but as to which words of in faith or by my faith our Judicious Sanderson de Iuramento makes them amount to no more then a meer Asseveration or at the most an Obtestation and saith that the genuine interpretation of the words by my faith whether in an assertory or promissory matter is this I speak from my heart I pawn my faith to you that the thing is so yet they at the same time would ridicule or seize on any one who had told them of what they were Sworn to in the Oath of Allegiance and of the recognition they made there as the words of that Oath are heartily willingly and truly upon the true faith of a Christian. A. There was a Solemn League and Covenant afterward took by those who had so apparently outraged the Oath of Allegiance and it was taken generally by all the Layety and Clergy of the Parliaments Party and was there not a general Tenderness of Conscience express'd then in the observance of that Covenant B. In the course of my Observation of Men and Things some things have more particularly occurred to me to shew you that the great Takers and imposers of that Covenant did as plainly and without any seeming remorfe outrage their Oath in that Covenant as they did their Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy For after they had first sworn to endeavour to preserve the Reformed Religion in the Church of Scotland in Doctrine Worship Discipline and Government and then sworn to endeavour to reform Religion in these Kingdoms of England and Ireland in all Points according to the Examples of the best Reformed Churches and so were bound to reform us according to the Pattern of Scotland for that Church must necessarily pass for the best Reform'd Church that stands in need of no Resormation being to be preserv'd by them in the State it was the Parliament instead of setling in England the Presbyterian Government which then in Scotland had within its Verge four Judicatories and all pretended to be founded on Divine Right 1. A Parochial Session 2. A Presbyterian Consistory 3. A Provincial Synod 4. A General Assembly as they were bound to did in effect settle ERASTIANISM a Tenet or hypothesis of Church-Government that the Scotch and English Presbyterian Divines avowed as great an hatred of as of Popery it self Erastianism giving the Supreme Power in Ecclesiasticals to the Civil Magistrate and in their Printed Votes and Orders reproved the Presbyterian Divines for challenging an Arbitrary Power and which they would not grant nor set up ten Thousand Iudicatories within the Kingdom as the Parliaments words were referring to the Scots Parechial Session where a competent number of Lay-Elders whom they call Presbyteri non docentes and Deacons proportionable to the Precinct and Extent of the Parish are conjoyn'd and which associate Body thus compacted is the Spiritual Parochial Sanhedrim But this very first Point of that Church-Government the Parliament hinder'd Presbytery from gaining here and opposed its moving in that lowest Sphere of the Parochial Session of setling so many Thousand Ecclesiastical Courts of Pye-Powder in England and whereby it could never hope to climb up to the Primum mobile of a General Assembly which in reality was the Sphere the Parliament it self moved in Mr. Prynne who was one of the greatest Champions for that Covenant was yet an Eminent profess'd Erastian and Mr. Coleman a Member of the Assembly of Divines another of those Champions for the Covenant was likewise a declared Erastian and a great Favourite of the Parliaments and whose frequent Sermons before them for Erastianism were Printed by their Order and which Sermons of his and likewise his Books
business of Trade and Traffick as any one of the age was pleas'd once to give me his opinion in Discourse that a vast number of our Statutes made for the advancement of Trade did really depress it and he then told me that the making of one new Law against the giving Alms to Beggars in the High-way would enrich the Nation almost more then all our old Statutes A. I have many times been apt to think so And considering how great a part of Mankind every where the Credulous are and that the Beggars are a necessary Tax upon the Credulous as we must imagine that a great loss happens to the well-meaning People in the Nation through the Profusion of their Charity to Paâ—…pers in the High ways or Streets so again considering the vast numbers of such Paâ—…pers and how valuable their Industry would be to the Publick if Necessity the mother of Industry through their not being relieved in the High-ways or Streets made them advantageous to the Kingdom instead of being Nuisances to it one may easily guess that an Act of Parliament of that Nature would awaken Trade and Manufacture to a much higher Proportion than our many sleeping Statutes can do B. Why then I must tell you what I told him namely that there is such a Statute in being and long ago made and that the execution of this Statute hath been in the populous Suburbs of our Metropolis the places where Peggars do so much swarm often awaken'd within these late years by the Middlesex-Iustices causing Printed Papers to be sent to the Church-wardens and Overseers of the Poor in the respective Parishes and with this Clause therein inserted viz. And for the discouragement of all idle Vagabonds and Vagrants c. all Persons are hereby desired and required to forbear to relieve any Beggars at their doors or in any other kind about the Streets on pain of suffering the respective Penalties by Law provided against all such Offenders A. I never before heard of this Penal Law. B. You may find it referr'd to and likewise what may shew you how it hath been tacitly dispensed with in my Lord Hatton's Treatise of Acts of Parliament and the Exposition thereof c. 5. Of Interpretation of Statutes by Equity and where he saith The Statute of E. 3. ordaineth That no maâ—… upon pain of Imprisonment should give Alms to a valtant Beggar Yet if one meet with such a one in so cold weather and so light apparel that if he have no Clothes given him he shall die before he comes to any Town if a man giveth him apparel he offends not the Law. For there is an inward dispensation by the bond of Christian Charity and Compassion But since humane Laws bind the Conscience we cannot without the Prince's tacit Consent rationally to be presumed thus give our selves the Latitude of an internal dispensation or relaxation from the band of that his Law So that therefore when ever you gratifie your own indulgent disposition in relieving one in the Streets or in itinere whom you look on as one of God's Poor you are at the same time to be sensible of the Regal dispensative Power relieving your Conscience and legitimating that your intended Charity by Tacit Dispensation A. You have often referr'd my Thoughts to consider the Nature of the Prince's Tacit dispensing Do you account it to have any great spreading Influence on mens Consciences here in keeping them both innocent and quiet B. When we meet some other time I shall shew you the Universal influence of this kind it hath among all Orders and Degrees of our Prince's Subjects and I shall then give you a full view of it A. But will you then tell me of Disability being thus tacitly dispens'd with and with a salvo to Conscience as to the obligation of humane Laws B. Yes in many Cases I have told you of one already when the Roman-Catholick Physicians were disabled by an Act of Parliament in the Reign of King Iames the First from Practising and when the Regal Tacit Dispensation proved an effectual Antidote to their Consciences against mortal Sin in the Case But because you seem to be somewhat impatient to know another Case wherein the Tacit Dispensation with disability did thus operate I shall give you a home-case by desiring you to recollect how old you were when you were first chosen a Parliament man and then to read Mr. Prynne's Book publish'd A. 1661. and call'd Minors no Senators or a brief Discourse proving Infants under 21 years to be uncapable in point of Law c. of being elected or admitted Members of the High Court of Parliament c. He refers there to Coke's Institutes for rendring none eligible to be a Knight Citizen or Burgess who is under the age of 21 years and in p. 5. he faith the Common Law of England is so exact and curious in the Election of all Officers of an inferior Nature as Coroners Verderers Keepers of Seals for Recognisances or Statutes Merchant Constables Bailiffs Mayors Clerks and others who are eligible by Writs Charters or Prescription that it expresly requires every one of them to be idoneum hominem qui melius sciat possit officium illud intendere and therefore saith he much less ought a Minor to be chosen a Knight Citizen or Burgess c. and if he is unable to be an Attorney or Proxy to assent for another in any Court of Iustice much more then in a Parliament the supremest Court. And in p. 24. to the Objection that some Infants under 21 years have been permitted to sit in former Parliaments he answers that noâ—…e ever sate in former Parliaments but only by Connivence and whose Elections were never question'd and that some whose Elections were question'd were ejected And now as Bishop Sanderson in his 7th Lecture viz. De Legum humanarum Causâ efficiente speaking of Laws ceasing to oblige by contrary Custom makes that contrary Custom to be nihil aliud quam Conjuncta populi Consensio eam legem ut inutilem observare negligentis Consensio principis Observationem ejus non exigentis and in his 10th Lecture doth very judiciously distinguish the Prince's Consent about relaxing Subjects from the obligation of a Law into that which is express'd and that which may rationally be presumed it was by this latter consent of your Prince so exuberantly indulgent in his Nature that you were brought off from Sin in the forum internum when you were both Senator and Minor and when you help'd on the making of Laws to disalle others and who have since made it a question whether the King could expresly or tacitly dispense with the incapacity that by means of your Vote and perhaps of other Minors passed to be enacted as a Punishment But to speak frankly you will oblige me now we are so near parting to tell me of any one learned Man in the Profession of the Laws of any part of Christendom and particularly of our
THE OBLIGATION Resulting from the OATH of SUPREMACY To Assist and Defend the Pre-eminence or Prerogative OF THE Dispensative Power BELONGING To the KING his Heirs and Successors In the asserting of that Power various Historical Passages occurring in the Usurpation after the Year 1641. are occasionally mentioned And an Account is given at large of the Progress of the Power of Dispensing as to Acts of Parliament about Religion since the Reformation and of divers Judgments of Parliaments declaring their Approbation of the Exercise of such Power and particularly in what concerns the Punishment of Disability or Incapacity Princes are Supreme over Persons not over Things This is the Supreme Power of Princes which we teach that they be Gods Ministers in their own Dominions bearing the Sword and freely to permit and publickly to Defend that which God commandeth in Faith and good Manners c. Princes may Command the Bodies of all their Subjects in time both of War and Peace c. Out of all Question where Princes may by God's Law Command all Men must obey them c. The Prince may discharge the Servant but no Man can discharge the Subject The Word of God teacheth you to obey Princes the words of men cannot loose you BISHOP BILSON of the SUPREMACY LONDON Printed for Thomas Dring at the Harrow at Chancery-Lane End in Fleetstreet William Crook at the Green Dragon without Temple-Bar and William Rogers at the Sun over against St. Dunstan's Church in Fleet-street 1687. To the Right Honorable JOHN Earl of MELFORT Viscount of Forth Lord Drummond of Rickartone c. His Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for the Kingdom of Scotland and one of His Majesty's most Honorable Privy Council in both Kingdoms of England and Scotland c. MY LORD AS the Historian hath told us of Ireland that long ago while the Arts and Sciences were generally banish'd from the Christian World they were enthroned in Ireland and that Men were sent thither from other Parts of Christendom to be improved in Learning so I have elsewhere observ'd that in some late Conjunctures and particularly during the turbid Interval of the Exclusion men might well be sent to Scotland to learn Loyalty And I having taken occasion in the first Part of this Discourse to shew my self a just honourer of that Country and as I may say somewhat like a Benefactor to it by sending thither the notices of some pass'd great Transactions that might possibly there give more light and life to the Moral Offices of Natural Allegiance or Obedience did hold my self obliged in Common Justice to address this Part of my Work to your Lordship For as your Station here qualifies you beyond other Subjects to receive what Tribute is offer'd to your Country so your handing it thither will necessarily make it there the more acceptable And when I consider with what an incomparable Tenderness for the Monarchy and its Rights so many of the Statutes of Scotland since the Year 1660. have been adorn'd I am apt to think that any matter of Presidents or Records by me recover'd out of the Sea of time where they lay so long useless and neglected and now happening to be serviceable to those Moral Offices before-mention'd would by the so many in that Kingdom devoted to consummate Obedience and Loyalty be more valued then if I could have imported into that Realm another such Treasure as that which lay so long buried in the Ocean near the Bahama Islands and that whoever Contributed to your Loyal Country any Substantial Notions that might enrich it in the discharge of the Duties of the born and sworn Allegiance would be esteem'd there as some way sharing in the honour of Arauna in giving like a King to a King. Long may your great Master live happy in the Enjoyment of the faithful Services of so vigilant a Minister as your Lordship who by the universality of your Knowledge accompany'd with universal Charity for all Mankind have appear'd to be born as I may say for the time of his most glorious Reign the time chosen by Heaven for Mercies Triumph on Earth Nothing vulgar was to be expected from a Person of your Lordship's extraordinary intellectual and moral Endowments and in whom the Loyalty and other Virtues of your many noble Ancestors have as it were lived extraduce And the World would be unjust to you if it acknowledged not its great Expectation answer'd by your greater Performances and particularly by your having been so eminently Ministerial in the Easing both the Cares of your Prince and of all his Subjects too by the Figure you have made in promoting the Ease of his People's Consciences and in further ennobling and endearing the Name of DRUMMOND by your Lordship's Prosecuting that by the Bravery of Action which the HISTORIAN of that your Name did by Words when he transmitted to Posterity the most Christian and Statesman-like Speech of Liberty of Conscience I know extant and as spoke by a Roman-Catholick Councellor in Scotland to King Iames the Fifth I most humbly kiss your Lordship's Hands and am My Lord Your Lordships most Obedient Servant P. P. THE OBLIGATION Resulting from the Oath of Supremacy To Assist and Defend the Pre-eminence or Prerogative OF THE Dispensative Power Belonging to the KING his Heirs and Successors c. PART I A. IN this Kingdom of England so naturally of old addicted to Religion and vehemence in it as to give a Bishop of Rome cause to complain he had more trouble given him by Applications from England about it then from all the World beside and afterward to make Geneva wonder at the Sabbatarians here exceeding the Iewish strictness and to cause Barclay in his Euphoâ—…mio to say of the English Nec quicqúam in numinis cultu modicum possunt and that our several Sects thought unos se Coelestium rerum participes exortes coeteros omnes esse did you ever observe hear or read of the style of Tenderness of Conscience so much used as in the year 41. and sometime afterward B. I have not From the Date of King Charles the First 's Declaration to all His loving Subjects about that time wherein he speaks of his Care for Exemption of Tender Consciences till the Date of King Charles the Second's Declaration from Breda wherein the Liberty of Tender Consciences is Provided for the clause of easing Tender Consciences ran through the Messages Addresses and Answers that passed between King and Parliament almost as much as the Clause of proponentibus legatis did run through the Councel of Trent A. But were not their Consciences extremely erroneous who thought themselves bound then to advance Religion by War B. Aâ—… and by a Civil War as you might have added against a Prince of the tenderest Conscience imaginable for that Character he had from an Arch-bishop in his Speech in the Parliament of 40 who said Our Sovereign is I will not say above other Princes but above all Christian men that ever I knew
or heard of a man of most upright dainty and scrupulous Conscience and afraid to look upon some Actions which other Princes abroad do usually swallow and he might have added a Prince the real Tenderness of whoâ—…e Conscience had so often favour'd the nominal tenderness of others who instead of being Tender-hearted Christians were Stiff-necked Iews and who might justly apprehend that it was only duritia cordis instead of Tenderness of Conscience he dispens'd with and as when God dispens'd with the Iews in Polygamy For since Tenderness of Conscience doth necessarily render a man abstemious from things lawful and to be of a gentle submissive temper not only to his Equals but Inferiors and to be merciful even to brute Creatures and not only averse from suing any one about Penal Lawes but ready to remit somewhat of his Right rather then to go to Law with a Stranger and much less with ones Father the Pater Patrioe seeing any men outraging the Lawes and the quiet of the whole Realm by that wilde brutish thing call'd War for ferinum quiddam bellum est might well judge them utterly devoid of all Tenderness of Conscience I shall therefore frankly tell you that no doubt but their Consciences were extremely erroneous or rather seaâ—…ed Our great Writer of Conscience Bishop Sanderson in his Sermon on Rom. 14. 13. discussing the Causes from which mens doubtfulness of mind may spring and saying that sometimes it proceeds from Tenderness of Conscience which yet is indeed a very blessed and a gracious thing doth very well add but yet as tender things may sooner miscarry very obnoxious through Satan's diligence and subtlety to be wrought upon to dangerous inconveniences And if we Consider that a Civil War cannot be lawful on both Sides however a foreign one may we may well account that any deluded melancholy People who were tempted to raise a Civil War out of a blind Zeal for Religion and to assault the Thirteenth of the Romans out of the Apocalypse had hard Spleens instead of tender Consciences and that they have soft Heads instead of tender Hearts who try to make Religion a gainer by War. But indeed the Project of planting Religion and Propagating the Church by War that is described to be Status humanoe Societatis dissolutoe and that so presently opens to all mens view the horrid Scene of Contempta Religio Rapta profana Sacra profanata is so vain that the old Proverbial Impiety of such who did castra sequi how victorious soever hath naturally help'd to make Conquering Nations embrace the very Religion of the Conquered a thing exemplify'd in the Conquests of the Danes and Saâ—…ns in England of the Gothes in Italy and France and Spain and of the Moors in Spain and in the Turks having overcome the Saracens embracing the Saracens Religion And the Vanity of Reforming the World by War that Profound and Conscientious Statesman Cardinal D'Ossat in his Third Book 86th Letter and to Villeroy A. 1597. hath well taught us and where he mentions how he urged to the Pope the reasonableness of Harry the 4th's so religiously observing the great Edict of Pacification and that the many Wars made again and again by Hereticks serv'd for nothing but in many places to abolish the Catholick Religion and in a manner all Ecclesiastical Discipline Iustice and Order and to introduce Atheism with the Sequel of all sorts of Sacrileges Parricides Rapes Treasons and Cruelties and other sorts of wickedness c. and afterward that on the making War all the Malecontents all People indebted and neâ—…ssitous all Debauchees and Vagabonds all Thieves and other Criminals whose Lives were become forfeited to the Law of what Religion or Opinion soever they were were wont to joyn with the Hugonots and did more harm to the Church and Religion and good manners in one day of War then they could in a hundred days of Peace Thus â—…e who â—…its in the Heavens had them here in derision while they in effect thus presumed to transprose Scripture and to say Glory to God in the highest and on Earth War and ill will towards men and while according to that Saying in Arch-bishop Lâ—…d's famous Star-Chamber-Speech viz. No Nation hath ever appear'd more jealous of Religion then the People of England have ever been they were under such Transports of misguided Zeal as to adore that their jealousie and to offer Sacrifices to it with as much Contempt of Heaven and Cruelty to Mankind as ever were offer'd to the image of Iealousie referr'd to by Ezekiel and to which the tenderest of their Relations were not thought too costly Victims and to which their truly Tender-Conscienced King who like Moses with Tenderness carried them in his Bosome as a Nursing-Father beareth the sucking Child and who sometimes out of Tenderness to several of his Complaining Children Sacrificed the rigour of his Penal Lawes and to whom they should have been subject for that Tender thing Conscience sake was himself at last Sacrificed How did that Pious Prince sometimes in relation to his Heterodox Protestant Subjects imitate the Father of the Prodigal who when his Son was yet afar off ran to meet him fell on his neck and kiss'd him a thing acknowledg'd by an Eminent learned Divine Mr. Iohn Ley in his Book call'd Defensive Doubts Hopes and Reasons Printed in the year 1641. and where in p. 123. urging the Bishops to procure the Revocation of a late Canon of the Church and having said wherein if they appear and prevail they need not fear any disparagement to their Prudence by withdrawing that they have decreed since the wisest Statesmen and greatest Governors have used many times to comply so far with popular Dispositions as to vary their own Acts with relation to their liking as the Pilot doth his Soils to comply with the wind he addeth And you cannot have a more authentic Example both to induce you to this and to defend you in it from all Imputations then that of our Sacred Sovereign who rather then he would give any Colour of Complaint for aggrievances to his People was pleas'd to DISPENSE with the five Articles of PERTH's Assembly and to discharge all Persons from urging the Practice thereof upon any either Laick or Ecclesiastical Person whatsoever and to free all his Subjects from all Censures and Pains whether Ecclesiastical or Secular for not urging practising and obeying any of them tho they were esâ—…ablish'd both by a General Assembly and by Act of Parliament King Charles his large Declaration of the â—…umults in Scotland p 370. p. 389. And for his OWN Acts for these Articles of Perth were propounded and ratify'd in the Reign of his Royal Father he imposed the Service Book the Book of Canons and high Commission upon his Subjects in Scotland and upon their humble Supplication was content graciously to grant a Discharge from them passing his Princely Promise that he would neither then nor afterwards press the Practice of them nor any
materialiter Si quis verum dicit putans esse falsum mentitur formaliter And he having before in l. 4 c. 4 viz Of Heresy made pertinacy a requisite to a man's being formally an Heretick and said that Pertinax est qui non est paratus Captivare intellectum rationem suam omnem Sacrae Scripturae adds Haereticus igitur potest esse quis materialiter dum assensum praebet erroâ—…i pernicioso vel ex simplici facilitate out temeritate haereticis or dendi qui sub honestâ aliquâ specie fallunt vel ex ignorantiâ qui â—…ormaliter non est haereticus cum pertinacia obstinatio animi deest atque adeo pro simpliciter haereticâ—… non est babendus Concordant with these measures of Ames have I observ'd those of some ingenuous Roman-Catholick Writers who have declared that they will not pronounce all Protestants to be Hereticks formaliter And it is therefore no wonder that such their Judgment of Charity hath been retaliated by some of the most Renowned Divines of the Church of England viz. the Lord Primate Bramhal Bishop Taylor Dr. Hammond and others who have deny'd to pronounce the worshipping the Host to be formal Idolatry that is to say to be not so at all in reality since we know that according to the trite Rule forma dat esse And thus that Primate in his Schism Guarded saith very well for that purpose p. 57. Every one who is involved materially in a Schism is not a formal Schismatick more then she that Marries after long expectation believing and having reason to believe that hâ—…r former Husband was dead is a formal Adulteress or then he who is drawn to give Divine Worship to a Creature by some misapprehension yet addressing his Devotions to the true God is a formal Idolater And having there cited S. Austin of Heresy He who did not run into his error out of his own over-weening Presumption nor defends it pertinaciously but receiv'd it from his seduced Parents and is careful to search out the truth and ready to be Corrected if he find it cut he is not to be reputed among Hereticks he saith it is much more true of Schism that he who is involv'd in Schism through the error of his Parents or Predecessors who carefully seeketh after truth and is prepared in his mind to embrace it whensoever he finds it he is not to be reputed a Schismatick I know Azorius de Iuramento gives his Judgment well in thesi That when a Law is changed to which a man is bound by Oath tho he is thereby materially discharged yet formally he is bound in respect of his will for if ever he actually assents to the alteration he is really perjured And so leaving it to such who were Men of great Knowledge and Consideration and had took the Oaths and were ready to promo'e a new Law for altering the hereditary Monarchy to think of the danger they incurred of the formal guilt of that Crime I have more Charity then to conclude all the rash and the incogitant and the weak and the seduced by the fantastick Interpretation of the Oath to have been perjured But as about the year 1164. Thomas Archbishop of Canterbury was at a Council held at Northampton accused by the King of Perjury and Condemned as guilty of it because he had not observ'd those English Customs that he was sworn to as I find Francisc. Long. de Concil p. 806. Col. 1. cited for it so if you have taken the Oath of Supremacy and Sworn to defend all the Privileges and Preheminences granted or belonging to the King his Heirs and Successors and united to the Imperial Crown of this Realm and are of opinion that one of the Privileges of those Heirs and Successors is to succéed to that Crown as it comes to their turn according to Proximity of Blood and by their inherent Birth-right and as the Hereditary Succession juâ—…e Coronae is setled by the Common Law of England I shall tell you that the Pious and profoundâ—…ly Learned Divine Dr. Hicks who hath study'd this Point as much as any man hath in his Writings told you that having taken this Oath you could not honestly consent to a Bill of Exclusion which would have deprived the next Heir and in him virtually the whole royal Family of the chief Privilege and Preheminence that belong'd to him by the Common Law of this Realm c. Your Curiosity I believe hath led you to read over his learned Iovian and to observe what he there saith in his Preface that some Men did pervert the meaning of the word Heirs in the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy from its common and usual acceptation to another more special on purpose to elude the force and Obligation which otherwise they must have had on the Consciences of the Excluders themselves But it is not only the Authority of this single great Divine that I can lay before your thoughts for the rendring the Attempt of the Exclusion contrary to our Oath but I can direct you to the censure of the three Estates of a Loyal Nation and of His late Majâ—…sty in the case For the Oaths in Scotland binding the takers both to the King and his Heirs and Successors as ours do here I can tell you that in the Third Parliament of King Charles the Second Aug. 13. 1681. you will find the Act in these words viz. The Estates of Parliament considering that the Kings of this Realm deriving their Royal Power from God Almighty alone do succeed lineally thereto according to the known degrees of Proximity in Blood which cannot be interrupted suspended or diverted by any Act or Statute whatsoever and that none can attempt to alter or divert the said Succession without involving the Subjects of this Kingdom in Perjury and Rebellion c. I know that during the late turbid interval of the Nation some Loyal men of the Church of England were so much misguided as to think that because de facto Parliaments have heretofore directed and limited the succession of the Crown in other manner then in course it would otherwise have gone as the words in the Printed Exclusion-Bill were they might therefore of right do so again notwithstanding they knew that after the Parliament of King Iames to prevent the Right of Succession from fluctuating any more had justly recognized and declared That the Imperial Crown of this Realm and Rights belonging to the same did by inherent Birth-right and lawful and undoubted Succession descend and come to him as being lineally justly and lawfully next and sole Heir of the Blood Royal of this Realm it did afterward by a New Oath of Obedience or Allegiance oblige mens Consciences both to the Crown and the hereditary lineal Succession and notwithstanding they knew that that Parliament had took care of continuing the Obligation of the Oath of Supremacy for the bearing Faith and true Allegiance to the King his Heirs and lawful Successors and to assist
and defend all Privileges and Preheminences and Authorities granted or belonging to the King his Heirs and Successors c. But I doubt not but the Consciences of the Considerate Loyal now expostulating with them in the cool of the day whether they did then well in being angry with the Imposers sense of their Oaths and in not penetrating into the Obligations thereby incurred and particularly in not weighing whether such who had taken those Oaths and yet by Projects and Expedients would have banish'd the Heir even after he should come to be Actual Successor from the effects of their Sworn Allegiance and of their Sworn Assistance and Defence of all Privileges and Preheminences and Authorities granted or belonging c. had not visibly out-ran their Oaths they will recollect the late dreadful want of tenderness for the observance of the same It will be hard for many men on a serious Self-examination to reflect otherwise on themselves after that Sir W. I. himself as the Printed Speeches in the Oxford-Parliament have it call'd an Expedient of that kind Iesuite's Powder and mentioned that on the Heirs coming to the title of King the learned Lawyers say that by 1. H. 7. all Incapacity is taken away by the Possession of the Crown and after that another learned Lawyer had there said I owe the Duke Obedience if he be King but if he be King and have no Power to Govern he is the King and no King and had before said That an Act of Parliament against Common sense is void To make a man King and not suffer him to exercise Kingly Power is a Contradiction And I am sure 't is a Contradiction to nothing more then our Oaths I desire not by referring to the breach of those Oaths to touch the tenderness of any man's sore place or to reproach him as to what he hath done for the time past but to promote the tenderness of his Conscience and that his Conscience may not reproach him for the time to come for not assisting and defending all Privileges and Preheminences belonging to the Crown When I consider the noble and vigorous Loyalty that your self and others who were mistaken in the Point of the Exclusion have since shewn in the Service of His gracious Majesty and the great Care that you and they in the Post where you were took in the Settlement of his Revenue and of avoiding the Character of those of Israel who brought their newly anointed King no Presents and your readâ—…ness at his call to venture your life for the support of his Crown and do observe in you and them a fix'd Preparation of mind for the defence of every Privilege that is made to appear to you as belonging to the Crown and that your Loyalty like a bone well sett is the firmer for having been broken I account that the Si non eâ—…rasset fecerat ille minùs may be apply'd to you and that after His Majesty's Pardon and the Series of your Heroical Actions of Loyalty in his Service you ought by all equal Judges according to the Instance I mention'd before to be absolv'd as who in all things have approved your selves to be clear in this Matter And I believe you being one of the Church of England the Adherents to which do now as generally call themselves The Loyal as the Independents did once vocifeâ—…ate themselves to be The Saints and the Principles of which Church do enjoyn Remorse and Penitence and rending of the heart and as much tenderness to any who have disrobed the Crown of any of its Rights and Privileges as was in David when his heart smote him because he had cut off the skirt of Saul ' s Garment and whose Divines do not only Preach the Doctrine of Non-resistance but whose Oaths bind to it and that of Supremacy binding to a positive Assistance of all Privileges c. your â—…nlighten'd Conscience will be your constant Remembrancer against any relapse A. I thank you for thus gently leading me by the hand to such a height of Noble thoughts relating to that Oath as from whence I am able to look back with grief on my past aberrations through inadvertence from what my Oath obliged me to in relation to the Support of the hereditary Monarchy and concerning which Obligation the Casuistical Discussion you sent me did sufficiently illuminate me and to take a prospect into my duty that lies before me to assist and defend to my Power all Iurisdictions Privileges c. granted or belonging to the King's Highness c. or united and annex'd to the Imperial Crown of this Realm I am sensible that as some vain Swearers in common Discourse will upon their being occasionally reproved for it be apt to swear that they did not swear and that as there are Fools that say in their Souls that there is no God and that there is no Soul so there is a sort of careless men who having taken this great Promissory Oath will yet by their Actions deny their having sworn to assist and defend some of those Privileges and likewise be apt to say in their hearts they have not invoked God as Witness and Revenger in the case of that Oath and that they are not absolutely bound by it or but only by their reserved sense or as if a man representing his Country he were only to take a kind of formal Oath in animam Domini and not to venture his own Soul. But for my part I account it as vile to be perjured in a solemn Promissory Oath as in a judicial Assertory one and shall hereafter think my self as much bound to use all exactness and tenderness in the recollection oâ—… my thoughts after a Promissory Oath as every Man of Honour doth before an assertory Oath when he is a witness in a Court of Law. And I think that it is only the multitudo peccantium about solemn promissroy Oaths as for example about the promised assistance and defence of the Privileges of the Crown in the Oath of Supremacy that diminisheth the Shame and â—…gnominy of mens being either through corrupt affections or incogitancy and the crassa negligentia which the Law makes to be dolus malus Vacillant or Contradictory in the Series of their actings promised or through lachesse or subdolcus pretences withholding their performance of part of what they obliged themselves to do and that keeps the populace from a nauseous looking on them as falsarii and as much as on Witnesses produced in Courts who in the things asserted by their Testimony are for want of precaution of thought varii vacillantes and contradictory to themselves and minglers of Falshood with truth and who conceal part of the whole truth they were to depose B. There is another thing that makes the Moral offices required in an Oath Promissory call for some kind of Consideration that an Oath Assertory doth not for we are not to depose oâ—… Matter of Law but only of Fact but in the Promissory parts
Consilium Peritorum and Discourse and Communication with others whom in meekness and lowliness of mind I am obliged to esteem better then my self to fix my own Iudgment of Discretion in this matter and will not deny to assist and defend this Preheminence of my Prince in particular without being morally certain that it is not granted or belongs not to him and will take the best care I can to effect that by any that by any lachesse or omission of the great Duty of Consideration I may give no man occasion again to exercise his Charity in not pronouncing me to be formally perjured and that after my Prince hath pardon'd me my attempted excluding him from the Throne I may not endeavour the disabling him from any one of his Rights while he is on it for so the style of the Exclusion Bill ran and it might have been as well call'd the Disabling Bill according to the words there shall be Excluded and DISABLED and is hereby Excluded and Disabled c. from all Titles Rights Prerogatives c. and rights that I have sworn to defend The Lord Chief Justice Vaughan who was a man of the first-Rate Talents if you consider both his natural and acquired parts doth yet in Thomas and Sorrell's Case in his Reports call the King's Power of Dispensing dark Learning and saith it seem'd so to him tho after so many Arguments in the Case And as that great Man found it dark so I think he left it such in some measure however yet so many daring Sciolists and who never look'd on a Law-Book in their lives will pretend to Oâ—…niscience in the Matter and perhaps out of a vain Jealousie of the King's Omnipotence being thereby asserted But I know your thoughts have travail'd far in this dark Learning and wherein you confess'd to me once that you had receiv'd some Illumination from that Iudge's Argument and as likewise you had from a Manuscript Report of that Case of Thomas and Sorrell containing an account of the things urged by the other Iudges and by the Councel concern'd in that Case and which are not mention'd in Sir I. Vaughan's Report of it and where he relates little but his own Argument He was a fair Reasoner and frank Discourser on all occasions and not byassed by any mercenary humour and according to that Candour you have often commended in him and which I have likewise experimented in your self let me now again make use of it in your imparting to me your thoughts in order to the Directing and Setling of mine as to the observance of my Oath in this particular And tho I know we live in a crooked and perverse Generation wherein so many are at the same time decrying both summum jus and Persecution and too all relaxation of the Laws and their Spirits lie like that Haven Acts 27. 12. toward the Southwest and Northwest two opposite Points and one would scarce think it possible that mens Spirits could be so extremely winding and crooked and thus opposite to themselves and while too they are crying out that any lawful Dispensing with the Laws establish'd is Contradictio in adjecto yet that Lord Chief Iustice's Report hath shew'd me the legality of the Dispensative Power in many particulars so far as to excite in me a desire to know more of it and to move me to pity the ignorance of my Countrymen who thus cry out of Contradictio in adjecto and not knowing what a Dispensation in Law means will fall under that censure of the Monk viz. Corrigis magnificâ—…t nescis quid Significat and of that Adage in Erasmus Stultior Choraebo who not being able to reckon in Numbers beyond five would yet undertake to Compute the numbers of the Waves in the Sea oras I may say in the words of S. Paul desiring to be Teachers of the Law understanding neither what they say nor whereof they affirm yet I assure you the Vogue of the Mobile will no more influence my thoughts about the Motion of the Laws by Dispensation then it would about the Motion of the Earth and who would take it very ill if they should be told it moves as fast as a Bullet out of a Canon because they do not perceive it A late great Philosopher of our Country hath told us That every day it appeareth more and more that years and days are determin'd by Motions of the Earth and another hath from the Diurnal and Annual Motion of the Earth endeavour'd to salve the Flows and Motions of some Seas illustrating the same by Waterin a Bowl arising or falling to either side according to the Motions of the Vessel but perhaps should a Prince in his Writings inculcate the Philosophy of the Earths motion the populace would have Fears and Iealousies of the instability of the Foundations of their Houses and Towns and of the shaking of their Property and as they have by Dispensations and they would be apt to quote Scripture against such Motion nay tho they should be told that such Motion would ennoble the Earth by exalting it into Heaven and too as Dispensations may be said to do by conducting those to Heaven who believe Humane Laws obliging the Conscience and yet shall not observe some of them But as when ever you have heretofore discours'd to me of Copernicus and Galilaeus and their Hypotheses you always found me an attentive Hearer you will be sure now much more to find me so while you are speaking of any of my Prince's Privileges that I am sworn to defend for I am now concern'd not to salve Phaenomena but to save my Soul by keeping my Oath And in the temper I am in now my whole Soul is overflowed with the sense of my having so lately through incogitancy violated that part of my Oath that so plainly obliged me to assist and defend the Hereditary Monarchy I shall be as chearfully attentive to you while you acquaint me with any Obligations resulting from my Oath as I would be to any one who told me how much I owed another and at the same time enabled me to pay it B. I shall be most ready when we meet next which I suppose will be very shortly to afford you lumen de lumine in any of the few things I know about this dark Learning In the mean time I shall observe to you on the occasion of your Mentioning the Lord Chief Iustice Vaughan's Report of Thomas and Sorrell's Case that as it hath through the Divine benignity been the frequent Method of Providence to send into the World unheard of Maladies and Remedies in the same Conjuncture of time and so likewise to make pestiferous Haeresiarchs and learned Confessors of the truth Contemporary and further when Heaven had made many of the inquisitive curious to thirst after the knowledge of truth in the works of Nature then to bless the World with the Discourses and Writings of Galilaeus Tycho-Brahe my Lord Bacon Gassendâ—…s and Des Cartes and Dr.
Harvey who open'd such great Springs of real Learning as refresh'd that noble thirst so it seems before the Date of His late Majesty's Declaration of Indulgence in the 24th year of his Reign and of the Act about the Test in the 25th year of it and both which were likely to produce among the Learned so many Inquiries into the Legality of the Dispensative Power inherent in the Crown and even among the unlearned an Epidemical Disease of talking about the same it came to pass in the course of Providence that by as Learned Iudges as ever sate on the English Bench and as Learned Councel as ever appear'd at its Bar the Learning about the Dispensative Power was ventilated and discuss'd in a Series of several years in the Case of Thomas and Sorrell For the Cause began in the King's Bench 18. Car. 2. and was there argued by some of the Great Councel of the Kingdom and there again argued on both sides by other Councel in Michaelmas-Term in the 19th year of his Reign And in Hilary-Term in 25. and 26. Car. 2. this Cause for the weight and difficulty of it was adjourn'd out of the King's-Bench into the Exchequer Chamber and there argued by others of the Greatest Councel of the Kingdom and many Law-Books quoted And the Case was afterward argued by all the Iudges of England at six several Days in Easter Trinity Michaelmas and Hilary Terms viz. by two Iudges each day and the Iudges differ'd in several Points and even about the definition or meaning of Dispensation For so that learned Chief Iustice tells you and saith That some of his Brothers defined it to be liberatio à poenâ and others to be Provida relaxatio Juris which saith he is defining an ignotum per ignotius and liberare à poenâ is the effect of a Pardon not of a Dispensation c. Thus as I may say there was a Circumvallation by the Learning which concern'd Dispensing that encompass'd some time preceding that Declaration of Indulgence in the 24th year of his Reign and some time following both it and the Act of the Test. I shall some other time perhaps entertain you with the Learned Manuscript Report of the whole Case but shall now tell you that during that Series of years there was no angry motion in the Sea of the Populace occasion'd by any thing said in any of the Arguments that propp'd up the Dispensative Power no not by that mention'd in Keeble's Reports about Thomas and Sorrell's Case to have been said in the Exchequer Chamber by Ellis the King's Serjeant and whose Opinion was as Currant for Sterling-Law as any Man 's of the long Robe Viz. That the King may SUSPEND an Act of Parliament till next Session And now since it hath thus appear'd out of that Chief Iustice his Report that at least a sixth part of the Sworn Iudges of the Realm as he thought were unacquainted with the meaning of Dispensing I think it may pass for a Miracle if any great number of the mobile did understand it But without their troubling their heads with Law-Books if they would but mind their English Bibles and there consult the 12th of S. Mathew they would soon forbear calling the lawful Dispensing with the Laws establish'd a Contradiction Our learned Ames on the Priests in the Temple Prophaning the Sabbath and being blameless observes very well in his Cases of Conscience 1. 3. c. 17. That Praecepta Deiex suâ naturâ nunquam ita Concurrent at necesse sit alterum eorum propriè violare per peccatum Quum enim praeceptum aliquod minus negligendum est ut majus observetur minus illud cessat pro illo tempore obligare that is to say is dispens'd with ita ut qui ex tali occasione illud negligunt sint planè inculpabiles id est non peccent Matth. 12. 5 7. And as to that in the Chapter of David's entring into the House of God and eating the Shew-bread which was not lawful for him to eat c. the Lord Bishop of London in his Second Letter to his Clergy Printed A. 1680. in the Paragraph about The half Communion occasionally thus observes with great Judgment That a positive Command of God cannot be disobey'd without guilt unless on some one or more of these grounds either 1. That God dispenses with it as he did with Circumcision in the Wilderness Or 2. That some Evil greater then the Consequence of the Non-Performance of it will certainly follow as when David ate the Shew-bread and they that were with him which depends on that rule of our Saviour which tho apply'd to the Sabbath yet extends to all other positive Commands that man was not made for them but they for man Or lastly in case of incapacity as the Children of Israels not going up to Ierusalem in the time of Captivity And there are other words in a foregoing Chapter of S. Matthew that are still applicable to the Pharisaical ignorance of such as reproach DISPENSING as unlawful Go and learn what that means I will have mercy and not sacrifice But according to the Example of our Blessed Lord in Having Compassion on the multitude I think you have taken a just occasion for the pitying so many of your Countrymen who in the present Conjuncture presume to exercise themselves in great Matters or in things too high for them relating to Law and State and who without enquiring about the modus of Dispensing with the Laws establish'd wherein Lawyers differ cry down the thing it self wholly and absolutely as a Contradiction to the lex terrae and in which not being so all Lawyers agree My Lord Primate Bramhal in his Book of A fair Warning to take heed of the Scottish Discipline shewing in Chap. 6. that I have before referred to That it robs the King of his Dispensative Power doth wish any one averse to that Power no greater Censure then that the Penal Laws might be duly executed on him till he recant his error And how Penal a thing by the Laws of Nations it is to alienate the hearts of People from the Prince's Government all the great Writers of those Laws and of the Iura Majestatis have enough shewn Moreover how Criminal a thing of that Nature is in the Court of Conscience our two great Writers of it Ames and Sanderson have enough taught us The Moral offices of Subjects toward their Princes are well set forth in Ames his Cases of Conscience 1. 5. c. 25. and where he saith Debent ex singulari reverentiâ cavere ne temerarium judicium ferant de ipsorum administrationes Exod. 21. 28. Eccles. 10. 20. 2 Pet. 2. 10. Jud. 8. Fundamentum hujus cautionis est 1. Candor ille qui cum erga omnes debet adhiberi tum singulariter erga Superiores 2. Difficultas explorandi fontes causas negotiorum Publicorum 3. Moderatio illa quâ leves infirmitates offensiones tolerare debemus communi tranquillitati
of the Oath of Supremacy which I never knew before that may seem to perplex the Conscience of any one who would take it and to expose it to such a kind of Ordeale-Purgation per ferrum candens that may make the passage through it dangerous to Ones Conscience B. Look you to that who have taken the Oath and do you consider how far you are by the Interpretations that I have referr'd you to obliged to take your measures in the Matter that lies now before you as to your assisting and defending the Prerogative of the Dispensative Power and I likewise recommend it to you to observe how much to the satisfaction and ease of the minds of the generality His Majesty's Lay-Subjects he by Connivence hath dispens'd with their not troubling themselves to study the Duty Bond or Allegianâ—…e that was acknowledged to be due to Henry the 8th or Edward the 6th or the Prerogative given by God to Godly Princes in the Scripture or the Christian Emperors in the Primitive times for however our Divines are by the 39 Articles and the Canons of King Iames and King Charles the First particularly obliged to study these Points and that the knowledge of the same may oblige Men of learning and leisure among the Layety to Conduct their Consciences thereby in their observance of this Oath yet His Majesty 's not reviving among all his Subjects by any Proclamation or Ecclesiastical Injunction or otherwise the notices of these forgotten things cannot but be acceptable to the generality of them as a Dispensation by Connivence And therefore in Complaisance with and gratitude to him they are by the Law of Nature bound to give him what is plainly his Due according to the plain Oath tender'd to and taken by them and to take care that they do not exercise an Illegal Power of dispensing by way of Interpretation of that Oath to the Subversion of the sense of the Assertory and Promissory parts of it both which are the Supporters of the Royal Dispensative Power But reserving for some other time my thoughts relating to the Dispensative Power exercised by the Godly Princes in Holy Scripture and by the Christian Emperors I shall desire you now to look on your Oath in the plain natural sense of it and as much as if no authoritative one had ever been given of it Consider that when you declare the King is the only Supreme Governor of this Realm or Governor of all Persons in it no Humane Laws can bind our Consciences by any disability Penal incurr'd from serving him When Kings say there is a Necessity for our Service St. Paul hath said we must needs be subject to them and which as Grotius hath well observ'd implies Obedience to their Commands as well as Submission to their Coercion As Dr. Donne in his Pseudo-Martyr observ'd well concerning the Oath of Allegiance All the Substance of the Oath is virtually contain'd in the first Proposition That King James IS lawful King of all these Dominions the rest are but Declarations and Branches naturally and necessarily proceeding from that root the same as to the Point we are upon may be verify'd of the Oath of Supremacy The King's Highness IS the only Supream Governor of this Realm not shall be by virtue of this Act IS SO notwithstanding any thing that hath been done or is a doing and whereby any former Princes supposed de facto consenting to tye up his hands from Governing all his Subjects and ranging them in their Stations in his Service is out of the Case of your Oath who have sworn thus that King Iames the Second IS the only Supreme Governor c. Since therefore you have in your Oath acknowledged that the King is the only Supream Governor and that according to the 37th Article of the Church of England He HATH the rule of all Estates and Degrees committed to his charge BY GOD whether they be Ecclesiastical or Civil I will ask you if any Humane Law can disable any Persons from being govern'd by him more then it can Children from honouring their Parents According to those words in Malachi If then I be a Father where is my honour and if I be a Master where is my fear c. may it not be said to every Subject while the King IS your King while he is your only Supreme Governor and while he is your Political Father will you not be Govern'd by him Or in effect will you Govern him by thinking to oblige him not to employ this or the other Subject and in effect endeavour both to dishonour and disable him who is the Head of the Community as it were by loss of Member Will you dishonour him who bears the Sword by imposing on him your belief that such a Member of the Body Politick is a gangrened one and necessary to be cut off from serving the State when he tells you he knoweth the contrary Or will you dishonour his Religion by saying that Papists are disabled by their Religion from being sound Members of the State when he knoweth they are not so disabled by it and accordingly as Sir William Temple hath in his Excellent Observations on the Low Countries made it appear that the Papists there are a sound part of the State Remember that the words only Supreme as apply'd to your King in the Assertory part of your Oath are not Otiosa Epitheta You will find that our great Casuist Bishop Sanderson in his Seventh Lecture of the Obligation of Conscience lays so much stress on those words in your Oath Only Supreme Governour as to judge him PERIUR'D who having taken the Oath shall assert the Figment as he calls it of Co-ordinate Power Quid enim PERIURIUM dici mereatur si hoc non sit manifestissimum PERIURIUM quem solum esse Supremum in suo regno Moderatorem Conceptis verbis juraveris ei parem etiam in suo regno potestatem constituere agnoscere If you did but often enough consider your Prince as asserted in your Oath to be Governor of the Realm you would find in your thoughts no difficulty of allowing him the Power of Commanding all Persons in it without exception to serve him Bishop Bilson in his Book of Supremacy p. 238. saith Though Bishops may be call'd Governors in respect of the Soul yet only Princes are Governors of Realms Pastors have Flocks and Bishops have Diocesses Realms and Dominions none have but Princes c. and so the style of Governor of this Realm belongs only to the Prince and not to the Priest and imports a Publick and Princely regiment And here I shall take occasion to tell you that as the Common Law subjecting the Inhabitants of this Realm to the Government of Bishops hath not kept our Princes from exempting particular Persons and Bodies Corporate from their Iurisdiction but could not exempt them from being subject to their Prince and from obeying him that much less could any Statute Law do it It is upon the weight of
Fra. Walsingham And what sense the House of Commons had in the beginning of the Reign of King Iames the First of the Disabling of several of the Nonconformist Divines being a Gravamen to the Realm appears by the Petition of that House to the King Anno 1610. as I find it in Mr. Nye's Beams of former Light p. 103. viz. Whereas divers painful and learned Pastors that have long time travell'd in the work of the Ministry with good Fruit and Blessing of their Labour have been removed from Ecclesiastical livings being their free-hold and from all means of maintenance to the great grief of sundry your Majesty's well-affected Subjects we therefore humbly beseech your Majesty would be graciously pleas'd that such deprived and silenced Ministers living quietly and peaceably may be restored c. But in short if you consider that the great Cause that excited the Loyal Zeal express'd in the Statute of the First of Queen Elizabeth and whereby so many Statutes of Harry the 8th against the Papal â—…pations were revived was that the King and Kingdom might not be disabled by Clergy-mens not being Subjects to the Crown through Papal Exemptions and that the Crown might Cum effectu be restored to its Government over them i. e. of the whole Realm and that our Monarchs should by means of such Exemption be no more disabled from being Governors only IN their Realm and not OF it and as when the Right of two Persons claiming to be Princes of Tuscany was before the Pope's Arbitrage he determin'd that one of them should be A Prince IN Tuscany and the other Oâ—… it you will find that this Supreme Power over all Persons as inherent in the King is the very Lapis Angularis on which your Abjuration of foreign Iurisdiction and on which the whole Promissory part of your Oath are built For when you have first declared in your Oath that the King is the only Supreme Governor of this Realm as well in all Spiritual or Ecclesiastical things or Causes as Temporal and then what followeth upon that viz. That no foreign Prince Person Prelate State or Potentate hath or ought to have any Iurisdiction Power Superiority Preheminence or Authority Ecclesiastical or Spiritual within this Realm you say And THEREFORE I do â—…tterly renounce and forsake aâ—…l foreign Iurisdictions c. And do promise that from henceforth I shall bear Faith and true Allegiance to the King's Highness c. and to my Power shall assist and defend all Iurisdictions c. granted or belonging to the King's Highness c. or united and annex'd to the Imperial Crown of this Realm Thus then the Reason why you abjure foreign Jurisdiction for you ABIURE when you swear to quit and forsake as Mr. Nye in his Observations on that Oath tells us and why you promise to assist and defend all Iurisdictions granted or belonging to the King whose Subject you are is resolved into the Kings being the only Supreme Governor of this Realm as well in all Spiritual or Ecclesiastical things or Causes as Temporal I am here further to tell you that when by your Oath you have renounced the Pope's Dispensative Power you have asserted and have obliged your self to defend the Jurisdiction of the King 's Dispensative Power in the room of it and the defence of which was the great design and drift of the entire Statute of 1 o. Eliz. and of your Oath therein and no collateral thing A. I have been and am pleas'd with that Prospect you have given me into the Region of the Dispensative Power used by the Crown in the Interpretation of my Oath a Region that was before to me like the terra Australis Borealis incognita but to deal frankly with you I am yet to seek out the meaning of this notion last â—…rted by you that the drift and design of the Statute of 1 o. Elizabethae and the Oath was to prop up the King 's Dispensative Power I doubt not but you are perfectly sensible that he who speaks to that tender thing call'd Conscience and about an Oath ought to be tender of any point he urgeth to it and not to wyre-draw any thing by forced Consequences that is to be offered to it as Obligatory B. I assure you I go by those very measures in giving you my Judgment of the design and drift of that Statute as I have done and that he must put the Statute on the wrack that will make it speak any other meaning Consider what the Prefatory part as the key of it mentions viz. That divers good Laws and Statutes that were made in Henry the Eighth's time as well for the utter extinguishment and putting away of all Usurped and Foreign Power c. as also for the restoring and uniting to the Imperial Crown of this Realm the ancient Iurisdictions c. to the same of Right belonging by reason whereof we your most humble and obedient Subjects from the 25th year of the Reign of your said dear Father were continually kept in good order and were disburden'd of divers great and intolerable Charges and Exactions before that time unlawfully taken and exacted by such Foreign Power and Authority as before that was usurped until such time as all the said good Laws and Statutes by one Act of Parliament made in the first and second years of the Reigns of the late King Philip and Queen Mary c. were repeai'â—… by reason whereof they then further mention how they were then brought under an Usurped Foreign Authority to their intolerable Charges and they thereupon desire the Repealing of that Act. Here we are given to see by their dating the aera of their being well govern'd and disburthen'd of divers great intolerable Charges and Exactions taken and exacted by Foreign Power from the 25th of Henry the 8th and had their eye on the Statute of the 25th of Henry the 8th c. 21. entituled No Imposition shall be paid to the Bishop of Rome which sets forth how the Subjects of this Realm were impoverish'd by intolerable Exactions of great Sums of Money taken out of this Realm by the Bishop of Rome as well in Pensions Censes Suits for Provisions and Expeditions of Bulls c. and also for Dispensations Licences Faculties Grants Relaxations Writs call'd Perinde valere Rehabilitations Abolitions and other infinite sorts of Bulls Breves and Instruments of sundry Natures c. wherein the Bishop of Rome hath been not only to be blamed for his Usurpation in the Premisses but also for his abusing and beguiling your Subjects pretending and persuading them that he hath Power to Dispense with all Humane Laws Uses and Customs of all Realms in all Causes which be call'd Spiritual which matter hath been usurped and practised by him and his Predecessors by many years in great deâ—…gation of your Imperial Crown and Authority Royal contrary to Right and Conscience For where this your Graces Realm recognizing no Superior under God but only your Grace hath been and
o Eliz. beforemention'd B. I can easily direct you to such a Writer of our Church who hath done the thing to the universal Satisfaction of the Inquisitive as to this Point and that is the Lord Primate Bramhal in his Book of Schism Guarded He saith there in p. 330 and 331. As our Grievances so our Reformation was only of the abuses of the Roman Court. Their bestowing of Prelacies and Dignities in England to the Prejudice of the right Patrons Their Convocating Synods in England without the King's leave Their Prohibiting English Prelates to make their old feudal Oaths to the King and obliging them to take new Oaths of Fidelity to the Pope Their imposing and receiving Tenths and first Fruits and other Arbitrary Pensions upon the English Clergy and lastly their Usurping a Legislative Iudiciary and Dispensative Power in the exterior Court by Political Coaction these are all the branches of Papal Power which we have rejected This Reformation is all the Separation that we have made in point of Discipline And for Doctrine we have no difference with them about the old Essentials of Christian Religion and their new Essentials which they have patch'd to the Creed are but their erroneous or at the best probable Opinions no Articles of Faith. Thus then according to these measures you see how much the hinge of the Reformation turns on the Usurpation of the Papacy in Dispensing for in all these particulars enumerated the Pope dispens'd with the King's Laws And he had before in p. 26. said This Primacy neither the Ancients nor we deny to St. Peter of Order of Place of Preheminence If this first movership would serve his turn the Controversie were at an end for our parts But this Primacy is over-lean the Court of Rome have no gusto to it They thirst after a visible Monarchy on Earth an absolute Ecclesiastical Soveraignty a Power to make Canons to abolish Canons to dispense with Canons to impose Pensions to dispose of Dignities to decide Controversies by a single Authority This was that which made the breach not the Innocent Primacy of St. Peter And afterward in p. 149. he saith But I must contract my Discourse to those Dispensations that are intended in the Laws of Henry the 8th that is the Power to dispense with English Laws in the exterior Court Let him bind or loose inwardly whom he will whether his Key erre or not we are not concern'd Secondly As he is a Prince in his own Territories he that hath Power to bind hath Power to loose He that hath Power to make Laws hath Power to dispense with his own Laws Laws are made of Common Events Those benign Circumstances that happen rarely are left to the Dispensative Grace of the Prince Thirdly As he is a Bishop whatever Dispensative Power the ancient Ecclesiastical Canons or Edicts of Christian Emperors give to the Bishop of Rome within those Territories that were subject to his Iurisdiction by Humane right we do not envy him so he suffer us to enjoy our ancient Privileges and Immunities freed from his Encroachments and Usurpations The Chief ground of the ancient Ecclesiastical Canon was let the old Customs prevail A possession or Prescription of Eleven hundred years is a good ward both in Law and Conscience against an Human Right and much more against a New pretence of Divine Right For Eleven hundred years our Kings and Bishops enjoy'd the sole Dispensative Power with all English Laws Civil and Ecclesiastical In all which time he is not able to give one instance of a Papal Dispensation in England nor any shadow of it when the Church was formed Where the Bishops of Rome had no Legislative Power no Iudiciary Power in the exteriour Court by necessary Consequence they could have no Dispensative Power He then in p. 169. mentions the said Statute of 25. H. 8th and having referr'd to the Proviso there to shew that its intent was not to vary from the Church of Christ in any other things declared by the Holy Scripture and the Word of God necessary to Salvation he saith then followeth the scope of our Reformation only to make an Ordinance by Policies necessary and convenient to repress Vice and for good Conservation of the Realm in Peace Unity and Tranquillity from ravine and spoil ensuing much the ancient Customs of this Realm in that behalf not minding to seek for any relief succours or remedies for any worldly things and Humane Laws in any cause of necessity but within this Realm at the hands of your Highness your Heirs and Successors Kings of this Realm which have and ought to have an Imperial Power and Authority in the same and not obliged in worldly Causes to any other Superior Thus then you see this Prelates sense of how much the taking away the Pope's Dispensative Power here and restoring that Power to the Crown was the Soul of the Reformation and tota in toto of it And this Act you see revived by the First of Elizabeth without garbling it in the least and the Dispensative Power thereby restored to her her Heirs and Successors and a Declaration that no Subjects of the Realm need for any worldly things and Humane Laws in any Cause of Necessity seek for any relief but within this Realm at the hands of our Soveraign as aforesaid And I shall tell you that the Bishop in the next Page refers to the Statute of the First of Eliz. and saith on his view of both Statutes Whatsoever Power our Laws did devest the Pope of they invested the King with it And of this the Power of Rehabilitating any of his Lay or Clerical Subjects is a part as was beforesaid A. You have cited somewhat out of this Great Champion for the King's Supremacy and for the Church of England and reputed to be the most clear Vindicator of it from Schism our Church hath had which hath created more anxiety in my mind about the Assertory part of the Oath then any thing hath done For the words in the Oath are I do utterly testify and declare c that no Foreign Prelate or Person hath or ought to have any Iurisdiction Power Ecclesiastical or Spiritual within this Realm and you have brought in the Primate granting that the Pope hath Power here to bind or loose inwardly and asserting that he hath here a Spiritual Power B. You judge right of the Bishop's Opinion and which is indeed express'd throughout his whole Book He tells us in p. 25. That St. Cyprian made all the Bishopricks in the World to be but one Masse whereof every Bishop had an entire part And he saith in p. 60 and 61. That neither King Harry the 8th nor any of our Legislators did ever endeavour to deprive the Bishop of Rome of the Power of the Keys or any part thereof either the Key of Order or the Key of Iurisdiction I mean Iurisdiction purely Spiritual which hath place only in the inner Court of Conscience and over such Persons as
Now you know how much Simplicity becomes an Oath and how requisite it is that it should be conceiv'd in plain and liquid terms and taken in the Imposer's sense and without mental reservations and that you should Swear therein to no dogmatical Assertion and as to which Mr. Nye saith well in his Observations on that Oath to swear positively to any dogmatical Assertion is not required It would be a taking the Name of God in vain for if it be a certain and undoubted truth in it self and to others as are Principles of Reason and Articles of Faith an Oath is vain for it ends no strife If doubtful and a question whether true or not tho such an Oath puts it out of question that I believe so yet not that it is a truth My belief tho never so much evidenced and confirm'd doth not make a doubtful matter in it self more credible nor is one man's believing an Assertion just ground for another man to believe the same Such an Oath therefore is in vain and not a fit Medium to end such a Controversy Now how far your declaring in your Oath that no foreign Prelaâ—…e hath nor ought to have any Iurisdiction Spiritual within this Realm and the Interpretation of it pursuant to the 37th Article delivering the Plain words The Bishop of Rome hath no Iurisdiction c. may bring you within the Verge of swearing what is dogmatical I leave you to judge but shall take the liberty to tell you that when I see some of our Laws and particularly this about our Oath girdled with so many Interpretations like new tender-sided Ships I shall be apt to take little pleasure in embarquing my Conscience in such an Oath and am apt to call to mind the Censure which Mr. Milton's Character of the Long Parliament of 40. fulminates against his Countrymen and by which he so much disables our understandings as to Political Government and saith that the Sun which we want ripens Wits as well as Fruits and as Wine and Oyl are imported to us from abroad so must ripe understanding c. B. But however tho our Wine and Oyl are imported to us from abroad our Dispensations are not and we have no Occasion to send Gold to Rome for Lead And I assure you he who shall consider that the English Virtuosi were the last that did receive the yokes of the old Imperial and later Papal Power of Rome and the first that threw them off will tho we are Crasso sub aëre nati have no cause to vilifie our understandings but rather to envy their triumphs over Infallibility so call'd And perhaps when I shall have told you of another passage of the Bishop P. 59. in his Schism guarded you will think the Eyes of our Ancestors understandings did look out sharp when the two Statutes of the 25th of H. 8. and 1 o Eliz. were made and there he saith Suppose any of our Reformers have run into any Excesses or Extremes either in their Expressions or perhaps in their Actions it is a difficult thing in great changes to observe a just mean it may be out of Humane Frailty as Lycurgus out of hatred to Drunkenness cut down all the Vines about Sparta or it may be out of Policy as men use to bend a Crooked rod as much the contrary way or as expert Masters of Musick do sometimes draw up their Scholars a Note too high to bring them to a just tone what is that to us as long as we practice the Mean and maintain the Mean and guide our selves by the certain line and level of Apostolical and Primitive Tradition There is no doubt but in the framing of the Statute of 1 o Eliz. and the Oath therein regard was had to the Oath in the 35th of H. 8. c. 1. viz. I having now the veil of Darkness of the Usurped Power Authority and Iurisdiction of the See and Bishops of Rome clearly taken away from mine Eyes do utterly testify and declare in my Conscience that neither the See nor the Bishop of Rome nor any foreign Potentate hath nor ought to have any Iurisdiction Power or Authority within this Realm neither by God's Law nor any other just Law or means c. and that I shall never consent nor agree that the aforesaid See or Bishop of Rome or their Successors shall exercise or have any manner of Authority Iurisdiction or Power within this Realm c. And this Oath remain'd the same all the rest of his Reign and all Edward the 6th's time and as to which Queen Elizabeth changed the Expression of Supreme Head and both Harry the 8th and She having their Eyes on the effect of Papal Excommunications and concern'd to have the nullity of them believed by their Subjects might seem according to the Primate's Expression to bend the crooked rod of the Papal Iurisdiction overmuch the contrary way in their Oaths that so it might come to that just straitness referr'd to according to the Primate's measures of it But after all I shall tell you that I think no Political respects can justifie the putting doubtful Expressions into an Oath or the taking of one with mental reservations of a sense different from the Common one of the words and I do therefore joyn issue with you in the Point that the Clause in the Oath That no foreign Prelate hath or ought to have any Iurisdiction c. being the very same in the 37th Article and in the Interpretation of which Article King Iames his Canons have as you said made you a sharer with the Clergy you and all others who take the Oath may be thankful for the benefit of that King having further exercised the Dispensative Power of his interpreting the whole intent of that Oath And that Interpretation of it which hath made the Coast of the Oath clear to you in this Point you will find agreeing to what he hath in our Language Publish'd to the World and dedicated to eternity For he having in his Premonition to all Christian Monarchs mention'd how he caus'd the House of Commons to Reform a Clause they had put into the Oath of Allegiance derogatory to the Pope's spiritual Power viz. That the Pope had no Power to Excommunicate him and that he was ready to consent that the Bishop of Rome should have the first Seat and be Patriarch of the West and be Primus Episcopus inter omnes Episcopos princeps Episcoporum so it be no otherwise but as Peter was Princeps Apostolorum takes occasion in his Apology for the Oath of Allegiance to let the World know his Royal judgment of the intent of the OATH of SUPREMACT and there in Confutation of the Pope's Breves and Bellarmine's Letter he saith in p. 108. that the rendring Christian Kings within their own Dominions Governors of their Church as well as of the rest of their People in being Custodes utriusque tabulae not by making new Articles of Faith c. but by
Godly Iealousie and tenderness to support one another and that Tender-Conscienced Prince who confirm'd this Canon did in it variously dispensare in lege as I may properly say with Allusion to Suarez de Legibus where in stead of using the Common Expression of dispensing WITH Laws he so frequently mentions that of dispensing IN them and thereby doth seem to take off somewhat of the harshness of Questions about Popes or Princes dispensing WITH Laws For when Sovereigns do dispensare in lege they really distribute their Sovereign Power throughout the Body of their respective Laws for their Preservation and as the heart doth dispense or distribute Blood in and throughout the Body-natural and the Brain Animal Spirits throughout the genus nervosum all the Body over And here the King having a tender regard to the firm and infirm Consciences of his People respectively and to their various Capacities of understanding and he being as Zealous for all their keeping their Oaths of Supremacy and Allegiance as any Prince could be for their taking them doth in the beginning of the Canon let such as you know who have been brought up to Study and who have a tenacious Memory and could remember more interpretations of the Oath then I have recounted to you if they had been given by our Princes that whereas sundry Laws Ordinances and Constitutions have been formerly made for the acknowledgment and profession of the most lawful and independent Authority of our Dread Sovereign Lord the King 's most Excellent Majesty over the State Ecclesiastical and Civil c he doth enjoyn them all to be carefully observ'd by all such Persons whom they concern upon the Penalties in the said Laws express Here then the Acts of Parliament before-mention'd and the Oaths and Articles and Canons and Authentick interpretations appear to look you in the face and the Articles particularly do so to the Clergy as having subscribed them But that Pious Prince as their Sovereign Pastor being desirous that his Clergy should gently allure the Layety with Line upon Line and Precept upon Precept to keep their Faith to God and Loyalty to himself rather then by Interpretation upon Interpretation of their Oaths would not in this Canon have them frighted with the sight of the Oaths themselves and which are there not named and all Archbishops Bishops and inferior Priests are moreover by the Canon required to Preach Teach and Exhort their people to obey honour and serve their King and that they presume not to speak of his Majesty's Power any other way then in this Canon is exoress'd but which Canon gives them a very fair licence to speak to their People of and for the King's Power of disabling and of rehabilitating his Subjects For it disables the publick Abâ—…ttors of any Position contrary to the Explications of the Regal Power therein by Excommunicating them till they repent and for the first Offence suspends them two years from the Profits of their Benefices and for the second deprives them of all their spiritual Promotions and it was in the Canon before said That if any Parson Uicar Curate or Preacher shall neglect his Duty in Publishing the said Explications c. he shall be suspended by his Ordinary till such time as upon his Penitence he shall give sufficient assurance or Evidence of his amendment and in case he be of any EXEMPT Iurisdiction he shall be censureable by His Majesty's Commissioners for Causes Ecclesiastical And the Canon makes any Offenders against it in the Universities as being exempt Jurisdictions there censureable or before His Majesty's Commissioners for Ecclesiastical Causes and so you have the Canon likewise by securing the Rights of exempt Jurisdictions asserting the Dispensative Power But if you will take Mr. Bagshaw's word in his first Argument in Parliament concerning the Canons he there tells you that that very Canon of the Convocation containing the Explanation of the Regal Power did necessarily imply their declared sense of the Laws being dispens'd with For saith he in making Determinations concerning Royal Power they have done against Law and have medled with things of which they have no Conusance for the Exposition of them belongs to the Iudges of the Land and they have no more right to expound them then the Iudges have to expound Texts of Scripture And we know that our Laws have been so careful of preserving the Judges right of interpreting them that they allow not the Bishops and their Officials Power to interpret any Acts of Parliament tho made about Matters of their Jurisdiction and Matters merely Spiritual as appears out of Hobart 84. Spenloe's Case and Coke 3. Inst. where he saith that an Act of Parliament made about things merely Spiritual shall be construed by the Common Law 〈◊〉 Judges But how far the disabling by the Power of His Majesty's Commissioners for Ecclesiastical Causes such who explain'd not the Regal Power according to that Canon might appear as an Instance of the Prerogative of Disabling and of occasional re-ennabling Mr. Bagshaw's second Argument in effect exposeth it to Consideration by mentioning that the last Letters Patents of the High Commission were Mich. 9. Car. in which are contain'd all things wherein the Commissioners were to meddle and that therefore the Punishing of any there on the account of this new Canon made not a year ago could not be pursuant to those Letters Patents His first Argument likewise wherein he gives his Iudgment that by Law that Convocation was dissolv'd by the Dissolution of the Parliament may let us see how far they in making any Canon depended on the Dispensative Power of Prerogative But any one who hates Faction will find that that Author did needlesly inflame the minds of that Parliament of Forty against those Canons and particularly with the foremention'd Exception against the first on the Account of the Explanation of the Regal Power having not been made by the Iudges and where the Exception doth through the sides of the Convocation strike at the honour of that King by whom those Canons were Confirm'd His Majesty in his memorable Speech at the Prorogation of the Parliament on the 20th of October 1628. occasionally said I Command and all you that are here to take notice of what I granted you in your Petition i. e. the Petition of Right but especially you my Lords the Iudges for to you only under me belongs the interpretation of the Laws for none of the Houses of Parliament joynt or separate have any Power either to make or declare a Law without my Consent Nor will any one wonder at the tenderness of any Crown'd heads in preserving their Right as to the interpretation of their Laws who hath consider'd that the usage of the ancient Romans in making their Civil Law to be among the things Sacred and Ceremonies of their Gods preserv'd in the Collegium Pontificum and appropriating the interpretation of it to their Pontifices did induce Augustus to be inaugurated Pontifex Maximus and
knew that if Papists had been Punish'd for their Religion in her Reign by Iudges and Iuries and Sheriffs that it was she had punish'd them And accordingly he in his Premonition to Christian Monarchs doth more regio and with a style of Majesty relating to his Executive Power thus tell them viz. And yet so far hath both my Heart and Government been from any bitterness as almost never one of those sharp Additions to former Laws hath ever yet been put in execution Well Sir In fine I leave it to you to consider on the whole matter how far the Contents of that Canon and particularly what is declared therein about the care of God's Church being so committed to Kings in the Scripture that they are commended when the Church keeps the right way and blamed when it runs amiss and therefore her Government belongs in chief to Kings c. do shew that Kings not only may but ought out of a regard to their own Souls to provide that where the safety of their Subjects Souls is concern'd their Dispensative Power by the interpretation of their Laws and the relaxation of their Rigour in particular Cases may be exerted I doubt not but you have observ'd many more Cases wherein the Royal Martyr to prevent imminent peril of Soul was put to it to exert such his Power A. I remember not to have read of more B. No If you had read the 39 Articles Printed in the Edition that I have done with his Declaration prefix'd thereunto you would find that there being a high ferment about the Arminian Controversie in the Church of England and the Arminian and Anti-Arminian Divines who both had subscribed the Articles appropriating the sense of them to both their Perswasions and too many drawing then the sense of them too much aside and all of them professing themselves bound in Conscience by the Laws that required their Subscription to the Articles and that their Subscription to them was to be taken in the Imposers sense and that as to the Article of the King 's being Supreme Governor of the Church of England it being supposed as the words in the Declaration are Some differences might arise concerning the External Polity Injunctions Canons or other Constitutions thereto belonging His Majesty by his Declaration again ratifying the Articles and particularly publishing that he was Supreme Governor of the Church of England did notify his Pleasure that as to any such Differences arising as aforesaid the Clergy in their Convocation should order and settle them he approving their Ordinances c. and to the end they might not trouble themselves or the Church by putting their own interpretations on the Articles he Requires their taking the Articles in the Literal and Grammatical sense and notifies that literal sense as restrain'd to the way of the general Expressions in the Articles and such as the Divines of the several Perswasions took as making for them so that now by His Majesty 's thus interpreting that sense they might warrantably continue so to do And according to what hath been said of Manna that it was that to every man's taste wherewith it was pleas'd most mens sense of the Articles might be so too by means of the declared Complaisance of His Majesty therewith A. One would then the less wonder at the Complaisance of the Clergy with that King's Power of Dispensing in his Laws by Interpreting or Declaring B. I could tell you of another passage in his Reign that will shew you how our Bishops made use of that Power as their Sheat Anchor to preserve the Hierarchy in the Storms it met with and how then the Bishops issuing out the Processes of their Ecclesiastical Courts in their own Names was by the Artifice of the Faction improved as an occasion of making a very great ferment in Church and State and such a one as nothing but the Royal Power of Interpretation or of declaring the Law could settle And therefore Archbishop Laud in his Epistle to the King before his famous Star-Chamber Speech did in the Name of the Church of England then think himself obliged to apply to the King in a most pathetical and solemn manner to exert that great Power in that Conjuncture viz. I do humbly in the Churches name desire of your Majesty that it may be resolv'd by all the Reverend Iudges of England and then Publish'd by your Majesty that our keeping Courts and issuing Process in our own Names and the like Exceptions formerly taken and now renew'd are not against the Laws of the Realm as 't is most certain they are not that so the Church Governors may go on cheerfully in their Duty and the Peoples minds be quieted by this assurance that neither the Law nor their liberty as Subjects is infringed thereby The many Pamphleteers of the Faction who attacqued the Hierarchy â—…eproached them with the Non-observance of Humane Laws and charged their Proceedings with Illegality because by the Statute of 1 o E. 6. c. 2. that required Processes Ecclesiastical to be in the King's name it was declar'd That the Bishops sending out their Process in their own Names was contrary to the Form and Order of the Summons and Process of the Common-Law used in this Realm And therefore as Heylin tells us in the Life of Archbishop Laud p. 321. in A. 1637. the King accordingly issued out his Proclamation declaring That the Bishops holding their Courts and issuing Process in their own Names were not against the Laws of the Realm and the Iudges Resolutions were therein notify'd to that purpose And upon all motions afterward for Prohibitions to the Ecclesiastical Court upon the pretence of their Processes not issuing out in the King's Name according to that Statute of E. the 6th the currant Law hath still been in Westminster-Hall for keeping up the sense of His Majesty declared in his Proclamation as to that Point According to the manner then of praising the Bridge we go over the Church of England having in Queen Elizabeth's time been preserv'd by the Regal Power of interpreting express'd in her Admonition and by the like Power in the time of King Charles the First and the salus animae having been at stake as to the Oath in her time and as to the avowed Principle of the Church of England about Humane Laws binding the Conscience in his time the use of that Dispensative Power being like a Bridge that kept them from falling into the Pit of Perdition deserv'd their Praise That eminent Divine Mr. Iohn Ley in his Learn'd Book call'd Defensive Doubts and Reasons for refusal of the Oath imposed by the Sixth Canon of the late Synod i. e. that in the year 1640. saith there p. 99. and 100 c. There are some of our Brethren who in good will to themselves and us have undertaken to expound the Oath so as that they and we without scruple may take it And we take kindly their good intention and in good will to them again
say right The King may thus according to his Lordship's Opinion suspend all Penal Disabilities as well as other Penalties incurr'd by Acts of Parliament and particularly by the Test-Act of 25 o Car. 2. and hereby to the Great figure he made in the framing of that Act any who are displeas'd with the Act may apply the Una eademque manus c. A. But I suppose his Lordship there has nothing that may favour the repealing of the Test or any of the Penal Laws against the Papists B. None would expect from him anything to be moved for the repealing of the Test however he allow'd Prerogative to suspend it But at that time that all People of narrow Souls and ignoble Thoughts were with so much clamour hunting down all Roman-Catholicks without distinction and when the most devout among them by being as it were ad bestias damnati and devoured by Informers appear'd as a spectacle of delight to many inhumane Protestants his Lordship's humanity was so great as to incline him in p. 6. there to give them somewhat like a Quietus from all Pecuniary Laws And the truth is when I consider how little Wool the fleecing of Roman Catholicks and Quakers or any Heterodox Religionaries at home or abroad hath brought to the Exchequer of any Prince or State and only to Informers and that the Consciences of peaceable Men have been burden'd by Men of no Conscience and by the turba gravis paci who are indeed burthens of the Earth I tremble to think what occasion may have been taken by Male-contents to say in their Hearts as to any such Prince or State according to those words of the Psalmist Thou sellest thy People for nought and dost not encrease thy Wealth by their Price or and takest no Money for them I shall at some other time of our meeting give you some account cut of the Records of the Exchequer of the inconsiderable Sums of Money that have for several years been brought to it by the severe Prosecutions of Roman-Catholicks and Quakers But there is another thing very well worth your reading in that Book and which is the more proper for our Consideration as suiting some great Points we have been discoursing that concern our Oath and that is this Hâ—…s â—…ate Majesty's Ministers in that year 1675. having brought in a Bill in Parliament for a TEST extending to Protestants and which as the Book saith was call'd by one of His Majesty's Ministers A moderate Security to the Church and Crown you will there in p. 15. see it mentioned how as to the Assertory Parts of the Oath in that Test It was worthy the Consideration of the Bishops whether Assertory Oaths which were properly appointed to give Testimony of a Matter of Fact wâ—…ereof a man is capable to be fully assured by the evidence of his Senses be lawfully to be made use of to confirm or invalidate Docâ—…inal Propositions and whether that Legislative Power which imposeth such an Oath doth not necessarily assume to it seif an Infallibility And as for promissory Oaths it was desired that those learned Prelates would consider the Opinion of Grotius De Jure Belli Pacis l. 2. c. 13. who seems to make it plain that those kind of Oaths are forbidden by our Saviour Christ Matth. 5. 34 37. and whether it would not become the Fathers of the Church when they have well weiâ—…h'd that and other places of the New Testament to be more tender in multiplying Oaths then hitherto the great Men of the Church have been It is there toward the end of the page mentioned how some of the Lords dâ—…sired that it might be clearly known whether it were meant all for an Oath or some of it a Declaration and some an Oath If the latter then it was desired it might be distinctly parted and that the declaratory part should be subscribed by it self and not sworn There was no small pains taken by the Lord Keeper and the Bishops to prove that it was brought in the two first Parts were only a Declaration and not an Oath and tho it was reply'd that to declare upon ones Oath or to abhor upon ones Oath is the same thing with I do Swear yet there was some difficulty to obtain the dividing of them and that the declaratory part should be only Subscribed and the reâ—…t sworn to A. But have you mention'd these things as if you would incline me to concur in opinion with that Lord as to the King's Power of suspending the Penalties incurr'd by Acts of Parliament and to agree with the Measures of some other Lords then about Oaths assertory and promissory as referr'd to B. If I were of the same opinion about the King's Power in that Matter as that Lord and Sir William Ellis were I would however forbear troubling you with it at this time while we are considering the Obligation of our Oath of Supremacy in order to our assistance and defence of the Preheminence of the Dispensative Power And therefore I shall not in the least endeavour to incline you now to imbibe the perswasion of any nice Controverted point of Law or Theology and wherein there seems probab lis causa litigandi And if when we are parted you on your recollection of our Discourse at this or our first meeting should have the least trouble by calling to mind any thing I have occasionally mention'd that is matter of Controversie you may with all my heart put it off with a temporary transeat from your thoughts But one of my aims in referring to that Opinion of his Lordship was That knowing you to be much concern'd for the ease and quiet of your Prince and Country I might Console you with an Instance of a great ferment about the Regal Power suddenly going off and as that Book too shew'd you that another did in the Government that was occasion'd by the new Test-Bill then introduced And I must tell you that another of my aims in my pointing you to his Lordship's Observation of the Suspensions of the Penal Statutes in the late Reigns was occasionally to direct you to a tenderness for the Regal Rights in general and for the undoubted Right of the Dispensative Power in Particular The same thing likewise hath been my aim in the several Presidents I have given you of the Ecclesiastical Power by Queen Elizabeth King Iames and King Charles the First exercised in suspending Penal Laws The expression of tenderness for the Rights of our Princes hath been much used by the loyal Patriot'y Writers in the late Reigns And here I shall à propos apply it as the Resuscitatio Part. 1. p. 37. mentions it as used by my Lord Bacon in a Speech in the House of Commons in the Reign of King Iames the First to the Question now before us in the Reign of King Iames the Second His Lordships words are Since therefore we have a Prince of so excellent Wisdom and Moderation of whose Authority we ought to
be TENDER as he is likewise of our Liberty let us enter into a true and indifferent Consideration how far forth the Case in question may touch his Authority and how far forth our Liberty And to speak clearly in my opinion it concerns his Authority much and our Liberty nothing at all That Expression concerning tenderness for the Regal Rights was very acceptable to the House of Commons when his late Majesty in his Letter to them from Bredagh April 14. 1660 thus made use of it viz. We have not the least doubt but you will be as TENDER in and jealous of any thing that may infringe our Honour and Authority as of your own Liberty and Property which is best preserv'd by preserving the other Remember therefore that your tenderness for Property is best preserv'd by your tenderness for the Regal Authority and if you would have your thoughts adorn'd by a constant Idea of true English Loyalty like a noble Picture retain'd there let me direct you to a Saying which like an Original drawn by a great Master may be fit for you to Copy after viz. that Saying of the Lord Keeper Coventry in a Speech in the House of Lords viz. Some would have the King's Prerogative rather tall then great others è contra But none can be truly loyal but he that is a good Patriot and none can be a good Patriot but he that is truly loyal Nor need it be further insinuated to you that without your keeping up a tenderness for the Regal Rights you cannot maintain your tenderness for Oaths And here I must take occasion to tell you that one of my aims in entertaining you with the Queries relating to Oaths out of that Book was to lay before your thoughts a tenderness as to Oaths in general both in keeping the lawful ones you have taken and in not imposing unlawful doubtful unnecessary or inexpedient ones on others and on such as our Prince considering the several Constitutions of their minds both as to firmness and infirmness hath thought fit to exempt from taking such strong Physick Moreover if you will think that another of my aims was to mind you that the same Queries might have been as ingeniously and ingenuously put in the year 1673. before the passing of the Test-Act as they were in debating the Test-Bill in the year 1675 I shall allow you so to do You may too if you will here occasionally consider how soon God in the course of his Providence doth sometimes turn the Tables and make such who were lately so active in imposing on others Oaths that seem'd doubtful and oppressive to them to be in danger of suffering by the like Impositions Mr. Burrough's a Pious Independent Divine who lived in the late times referring in his Irenicum to the Impositions and Persecution design'd by the Presbyterians against those of his Perswasion saith there but the Tables may turn one day wherein the Sufferers shall have the greatest Ease and the Inflicters the sorest Burthen But God forbid that their Brethren should lay it upon them tho it were put into their Power to do it And you may take notice that the Book we before spoke of owns the Activity of the Roman-Catholick Lords then in hindering that Test's being brought on Protestants the Consideration whereof may I think justly incline all who account it their Happiness to have been freed from that design'd Oath not to grudge at the favour that hath been extended by the Diâ—…pensative Power to particular Roman-Catholicks excused from taking other Oaths or at any just favour if ever happening to be afforded them by the Authentick Interpretation of what in the Statute-Oaths seems doubtful to them So tender was the Government in the time of Edward the 6th about the not making the Consciences of the People uneasie by Oaths that you will find it in the Reformation of the Ecclesiastical Laws begun in Harry the 8th's Reign and carry'd on in his that the Magna nomina who were employ'd to make a New Body of Laws did in Compassion to the Consciences of those who took the usual Promissory Oaths for the observance of the Statutes of Universities Collegiate Churches and such like Societies and Corporations order this Clause to be added to the Oaths viz. Haec omnibus partibus servabo â—…uibus cum sacrâ Scripturâ cum legibus civilibus Ecclesiasticis hujus Regni consentient quantum vires meae patientur The School-men saith one would be thought most tender and most curious in the point of Oaths They mince them out so fine that a wholâ—… Million of Oaths may stand as some speak of Angels on the point of a sharp needâ—…e I have therefore not wonder'd at it when I have seen men standing on this sharp point of Oaths so often inconsistent with themselves Notwithstanding what I told you out of my Lord Coke that an Oath cannot be ministred to any unless the same be allow'd by the Common Law or by some Act of Parliament neither can any Oath allow'd by the Common Law or by Act of Parliament be alter'd but by Act of Parliament yet as you know that the House of Commons in the 30th year of Queen Elizabeth desiring that no Oath or Subscription might be tendred to any at their entrance into the Ministry but such as is expresly prescribed by the Statutes of this Realm except the Oath against Corrupt entring did thereby however approve of the tendring of that Oath so my Lord Coke likewise Inst. 3. c. 71. viz. Of Simony seems to approve of that Oath in saying that Simony is the more odious because it is accompany'd with Perjury for the Presentee c. is Sworn to commit no Simony referring there to Lynwood and had before in that Chapter referr'd to Canon 40. 1 Iacobi 1603. The Oath against Simony You may too remember what I so lately told you of my Lord Coke's having with some approbation or fair respect mention'd the Clergy's Oath of Canonical obedience And I can tell you that I lately looking on the Charter of the Corporation of Shipwrights granted by King Iames the First in the Tenth year of his Reign observed therein that Thomas Lord Ellesmere Lord Chancellor of England Sir Thomas Flemming Lord Chief Justice of England Sir Edward Coke Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas did pursuant to the Statute in the 19th year of Henry the 7th allow and approve under their Ha ds and Seals divers Articles Acts and Ordinances for the better Order Rule and Government of the Art or Mystery of Shipwrights exhibited to them by the Corporation and did moreover oâ—…in the form of three new Oaths to be taken by the Officers and Freemen of that Corporation and did DISABLE the Refusers of such Oath to be Members of the Corporation But I may here occasionally by the way tell you what you will find in Croke 3d. Sir Edward Coke Sheriff of Buckingham's Case viz. That upon several Exceptions there mention'd as by him
Superstition in the World then the Quakers so much restraining to their epitomes of speech in Commerce the interpretation of those words in S. Matthew But let your Communication be Yea yea Nay nay c. which were pursuant to the Proverbial Saying among the Jews Iustorum etiam est etiam non est non And as King Athelstan's Charter to his Tenants the Inhabitants of Rippon I have elsewhere mention'd viz. Quod homines sui Riponienses sint credendi per suum Ya per suâ—…m Nay in omnibus quâ—…lis curiis c. hath been by none that I have heard of look'd on with an evil eye so neither by me should the like Dispensation granted by our Prince to any others he repined at A. Your having as it were diverted me by the thought of that Superstition of the Quakers brings to my mind the pleasant Entertainment you once gave me by lending me a Book writ long ago call'd A brief Treatise of Oaths exacted by Ordinaries and Ecclesiastical Iudges to answer generally to all such Articles or Interrogarories as pleaseth them to propound and of their forced and Constrained Oaths ex officio wherein is proved that the same are unlawful And I remember much of the matter in that Author being dull I came to somewhat at last recited by him that had in it some Sales or what I may call some drops of Spirit of Vitriol and which were but necessary to give a grateful acidity to his Apozeme when he toward the end of that Book of Oaths in p. 56. and 57. thus brings in a RATIONALE of the Ceremonious manner of giving an Oath and of the Manufacture of it as some men do fidem facere by it viz. For in this matter of an Oath they have devised according to their toying fantasie a certain foolish figurative Ceremony in the ministring thereof For the Deponent for sooth must lay his three middle Fingers stretch'd outright upon the Book in signification of the Holy Trinity and Catholick Faith and his Thumb and little Finger he must put downward under the Book in token of Damnation both of Body and Soul if he say not the truth The Thumb belike as the greater representing the heavy mass of the Body and the little Finger the light and incorpoâ—…eal substance of the Soul. How superstitious also they were concerning this Ceremony of the Book little regarding the true use and end of an Oath as appears by the Allegorical Exposition curiously set forth by one of their Personate and Counterfeit Prelates who saith that the Circumstances in the Act of an Oath are very great and weighty inasmuch as he that Sweareth by a Book doth three things First as tho he should say Let that which is written in the Book never do me good neither the new nor the old Law if I lye in this mine Oath Secondly he puts his Hand on the Book as tho he should say Nor the good work which I have done profit me ought before the face of Christ except I say the truth which is founded in Christ. Thirdly he kisseth the Book as tho he should say Let never the Prayers and Petitions which by my mouth I have utter'd avail me any thing to my Soul's health if I say not truly in this mine Oath Yet you must take this as meant only by this Reverend Father where Lay men or the baser sort of the Clergy take an Oath For that blessed Bonner not long since hath taught us this trick of his Law that a Bishop may Swear such is his Privilege inspectis Evangeliis non tactis bare sight of the Book without touch or kiss will well enough serve his Lordship's turn B. Well Sir throwing out of our thoughts the minutioe of all formal trifling let us not at the same time try to make men laugh and weep by imposing Oaths on them And let the Consideration of this namely that the Noble Morals enjoyn'd by the Christian Doctrine have not prevailed all this while to secure Christians against one another without the Garranty of Oaths or by the Christianus sum not being still judged oequi-ponderous with an Oath impress a solemn grief on our Minds And considering that both the Verbum Regium and the verbum Sacerdotis have been so much allow'd equal to Oaths and that all Christians ought to value themselves on being A Royal Priesthood and on their great Chief having made them Kings and Priests to God and his Father let us bemoan the present State of Christianity and Christians having as it were Decreed it that they cannot take one anothers words And let the thought likewise of the insufficiency of the Security of Oaths themselves to keep up Governments work in us such a serious Mortification and Profound sense of the degeneracy of Mankind and such an inclination to place our chief Confidence in somewhat above the words or Oaths of men as becomes us But I shall give you an instance of this at home too pregnant with horror Our thoughts have had a long melancholy walk in the Peristyllium of the many Interpretations that supported our Great Oath of Supremacy and as to which Oath it being probable that a vulgar Error having prevailed among many of the Faction for some time before the year 1640. namely that the Oath of Supremacy was intended to bind only in opposition to Popery occasion was thereby given to the Fathers of our Church to procure the last Authentick Interpretation of the Assertory part of the Oath in the Canons of 1640. and cautioning us there in the first Canon against any Independent Coactive Power whether Papal or Popular But after our view of the orderly and necessary placing of all these polish'd and strong Pillars of Interpretation erected between the time of Primo Elizabethoe and the year 1640 and after Providence so ordering it at last that the Consciences of the Loyal who were then reserv'd as Lyons to guard the Throne had then a clear Oath to guard their Loyalty and after their having then cause to say Tantoe molis erat to render the Oath both acceptable to Conscience and adequate to its first reasonable intention the Land was punish'd with a dreadful Rebellion and the sacred Obligations of the Oath and all its Interpretations could no more quench the raging Flames of the Civil War then the sprinkling of a little Holy Water could save a Town on fire You may therefore here again more particularly take it into your thoughts that there is somewhat beside or beyond Oaths necessary to incline Heaven to Preserve States and Kingdoms and Ecclesiastical Polities therein namely the trusting in God and offering to him what the 51. Psalm calls the Sacrifices of God and without which the thought of the tantoe molis and the endeavour'd piling Interpretation upon Interpretation or Oath upon Oath as high as Heaven and thereby designing to keep men together embody'd and united in the external Profession of any State-Religion will prove as
of the Advocate for Conscience Liberty discoursing of the Oath of Supremacy in p. 181. seq saith That Luther Calvin Knox Gilby disliked it and mentions that a Iurisdiction purely spiritual was communicated to H. the 8th by his Supremacy and assumed by him and that he wanted his Spiritual By-title of Supremacy to justifie his Divorce aâ—…d his taking the Church Revenue into his hands and that the Protectorship in E the 6th's time by virtue of the Oath of Supremacy continued to make new Church-Laws Institutions c. and that Queen Elizabeth reassumed this Iurisdiction having a greater necessity for it then her Brother because her Marriage was declared null by the Pope So then the state of Protestancy abroad and at home call'd on the Queen to distribute or dispense her Supreme Power in her Law by her Interpretation making a change not of it but in the body of it and which had it been changed by a repeal in Parliament for another would have seem'd to blemish her figure of semper Eadem and have reflected on the Understandings and Consciences of those who had before took the Oath There was then in that Conjuncture an universal outcry of Conscience that Sin lies at the door a thing worse then Hannibal ad Portas a burthen that hath caus'd all the Groans of the Creation that ever happen'd And where there is Periculum animae there is always Periculum in morâ and which the Queen 's authentick Interpretation did remove and which was approved by the next Parliament and no noise made or complaining heard in our streets about any seeming Alteration made in the Law or Oath it self by the Prerogative of interpretation or acquittal from the disabling Punishments then exercised And it is but congruous to humane Nature and common Policy in men when they see any thing not ill in it self done that hath eminently conduced to make the World easie not to embarass such thing with litigious scruples about the fieri non debuit nor to adventure to trouble the World again when it is inclined to and resolv'd upon its rest Some thoughts of this Nature probably inclined my Lord Coke to shew the Complaisance he did not only to King Iames his incapacitating Canon about the double Subscription but as to the Oath against Simony that of Canonical obedience and which inclined Judge Croke to be pleas'd with the Canons of 1640. tho containing the Oath with an Et caetera and which made the Iudges so apt to over-rule some of Sir E. Coke's Exceptions to the Sheriffs Oath as I have mention'd You may indeed find that some among the Puritans in some Conjunctures in Queen Elizabeth's time did presume to reproach the Government of the Church with her having dispens'd with the disability of some Persons incurr'd by Act of Parliament The Author of the famous Book publish'd in her Reign call'd An Abstract of certain Acts of Parliament hath in the Conclusion these two factious Queries viz. Whether a mere Lay-man no Doctor of the Civil Law may be a Bishop's Chancellor and so may Excommunicate Whether a mere Lay-man no Doctor of the Civil Law may be a Bishop's Register contrary to an Act of Parliament The Author intendeth there to referr to the Statute of 37 o. H. 8. c. 17. and as he had before expresly done in p. 196. Seq and of which Statute we have so much discours'd and he in p. 201. instanceth in many Lay-men who were not Doctors of the Civil Law and yet then exercised Ecclesiastical Iurisdiction He had too in p. 196. took notice that as that Statute establish'd and confirm'd to the King and his Successors and so unto our most Gracious Soveraign the Queen's Majesty that now is lawful Preheminence Power Superiority and Lordship over all Persons within her Dominions of what state or Condition soever touching Punishments for any Heresies Errors Vices Schisms Abuses Idolatries Hypocrisies and Superstitions springing or growing by means of any her disobedient and disloyal Subjects so hath her Majesty by her Injunctions publish'd that her Highness did never pretend any Title or challenge any Authority to punish any of her Subjects for any of the said Offences by Censure Ecclesiastical in right belonging to her Royal Person but that her Highness meaning and intent is and always hath been to commit the execution thereof always to the Ecclesiastical State of her time and he then sets down her Interpretation in the Admonition But had that Author consider'd how it was declared by that Statute that by Holy Scripture all Authority and Power is given to His Majesty and all such Persons as His Majesty shall appoint to hear and determine all manner of Causes Ecclesiastical and to correct Uice and Sin whatsoever and that this Statute was revived by the 1st of Eliz. he would not have wonder'd at the Queen's allowing that Statute to be dispens'd with as it was Nor would any one therefore wonder at the Royal Martyr in the 12th and 13th Canons of A. 1640. Condescending to humour the Complaints of the Puritans by an equal Interpretation of that Statute of 37 o H. 8. and by dispensing with it as he did and that so far as to the disabling Lay-Chancellors to proceed in such Censures as they were enabled by that Statute to do Mr. Bagshaw in his first Argument in Parliament concerning the Canons thus reflects on the Clergy for those two Canons viz. Concerning the 12th and 13th Canons touching the freeing and discharging of Chancellors and Officials from executing any Excommunication in their own Person or any Censure against the Clergy because they are Lay-men I say that in doing and enacting this they have done quite contrary to an Act of Parliament still in force in taking from them this Power of exercising the Censures of the Church which that Statute gives them which I did look when some Civilians now in the House should have maintain'd And altho it were to be wish'd that only Clergymen should have this Power of Excommunication and other Censures of the Church yet seeing an Act of Parliament hath given this Power to Lay-men it is high Presumption to make Canons against it But he well knew that after the stamp of the Royal Authority put on these Canons as well as before Lay-men in the Court of Delegates did Excommunicate and as they did in the high Commission And you may observe it that in the Commission granted Primo Elizabethae to her Commissioners pursuant to the Statute of that year there were but two Clergy-men and those Bishops and 17 Lay-men My Lord Coke Inst. 4. c. 74. writing of the High Commission in Causes Ecclesiastical saith There is no question but the Commissioners for such Causes as are committed to them by force of this Act may if the Commissioners be Competent proceed to deprivation of the Popish Clergy which was the main object of the Act or to punish them by Ecclesiastical Censures c. And without question if
making his Interpretation of the Law to be a rule in all Cases as in divers late Proclamations he hath done And if you will look on His Majesty's Answer to the Declaration of bâ—…th Houses of Parliament of July 1. 1642. you will find there very many Profound Observations and Presidents and Authorities of Law and wherein he several times refers to the happy times of that good Queen Elizabeth as well as to ancient Times and he thence taking his measures saith in p. 15. The King caus'd Proclamations to be made for in such Cases Proclamations declaratory were not conceiv'd in those times to be illegal c. And you may easily imagine this Power of authentick Interpretation very well Consistent with the just Power of the House of Lords in declaring the Law in a particular Case of which I occasionally mention'd to you the late Earl of Anglesy's opinion But how not only the Lords but the House of Commons did often during the late Rebellion encroach on the Regal Power of declaring and by Ordinances without and against the King's consent I shall some other time shew you at large A. Can you readily now at this time give any instance of the House of Commons thâ—…n doing any thing of that Nature B. Yes and I can refer â—…ou for the fact of it to The Declaration of King Charles the First of August 12. 1642. to all his lâ—…ving Subjects and who there mentionâ—… That after several in imations of Treasons PLOTS and Conspiracies 〈◊〉 the Papists of great Provisions of Arms by them and training Men under-ground and many other false Reports created spread and countenanced by themselves upon some general Apprehensions of Designs against them a Protestation is made in the House of Commons for Union and Consent among themselves to perform those Duties which if they had meant no more then they had express'd had been sufficiently provided for by the Oaths they had already taken and which their former Duties obliged them to Hereupon a Protestation is framed and being put into such words as no honest man could believe himself obliged by it to any unlawful Action was voluntarily taken by all the Members of the House of Commons and presently recommended to the House of Lords where it receiv'd the same Countenance that is was look'd upon as containing nothing in it self unlawful tho some Members of that House refused to take it as being voluntary and not imposed by any lawful Authority Then 't is recommended to the City of London and over all the Kingdom by Order from the House of Commons a strange and unheard of Usurpation to be taken by all Persons But within very few days upon Conference among themselves and among those Clergymen who daily sollicite their unlawful and unwarrantable Designs with the People they find they were by this Protestation so far from having drawn People into their Combination that in truth all men conceiv'd that they were even engaged by it against their main Design by promising to defend the true Reform'd Protestant Religion express'd in the Doctrine of the Church of England And thereupon some Persons of that Faction prevail'd that after the Members of the Houses had taken it a Declaration was set forth by the House of Commons that by those words The Doctrine of the Church of England was intended only so far as it was opposite to Popery and Popish innovations and that the words were not to be extended to the maintenance of the Discipline and Government c. and so under this Explication and Declaration publish'd only by the House of Commons and never assented to by the House of Peers this Protestation was directed to be generally taken throughout England And to that purpose a Bill is drawn passed the House of Commons and sent up to the House of Lords who at the second Reading finding many particulars in it unfit to be so severely imposed upon the Subjects absolutely rejected You see here again an Instance of the Prudence of the great Consiliarii Naâ—…i His Majesty's great Councel in not aiding the Faction against Prerogative in that Point For tho on the account of His Majesty's tacit Dispensation by way of Connivence presumed in that Conjuncture many of the Loyal of the Church of England did take that Protestation and concur in the recommendation His Majesty not having Prohibited the taking of it as he did aâ—…terward by a Proclamation forbid the taking of the Covenant â—…et when it was visible that such an Interpretation so encroaching on the Church of England and on Prerogative was design'd without and against His Majesty's Approbation to be imposed on the People it is not to be wonder'd that the Lords as things then were rejected a Bill of that Nature But it follows then in His Majesty's Declaration Yet of this we took no notice but pressed still the Disbanding of the Armies c. so that the ferment about the Protestation and the trouble it gave the Kingdom by the Super-induced Interpretation were in a short time over A. You having from the occasion given you by Queen Elizabeth's Power of interpreting and by her dispensing with disability in all who took the Oath of Supremacy according to the sense notify'd in The Admonition referr'd my thoughts often to the Regal Power of interpreting and having in the beginning of our Discourse this meeting left it to me tâ—… consider how much the Power of Dispensing with any Law may be thought â—…o-incident with interpreting and promised me that you would some other time shew me at large that the Dispensing with Laws is in effect the equitable interpreting that in such and such Cases and Circumstances they were not intended and ought not to bind but ought to be relax'd I shall be glad if before we part you would do it B. I had rather do it at our next meeting And if in the mean time you please to entertain your self with Bishop Taylor 's Ductor Dubitantium you will there find much learnedly writ of this subject And he there in l. 3. c. 6. particularly tells us that the Interpretation of Laws made by Iudges is matter of Fidelity and nothing of Empire and Power and it is a good probable warranty of Conscience â—…ut no final Determination in case any doubt happen to oppose it No man is to ask favour of the Iudge but of the Prince he may And he had before said That when the Power that made the Law doth interpret it the Interpretation is authentical and â—…bligeth Conscience as much as the Law and can release the Bond of Conscience as far forth as the Interpretation extends as if the Law were abrogated and that whether it be by declaring the meaning of the Law or by abating the rigour or by dispensing in the Case or enlarging the Favour or restraining the Severity it is all one as to the event of the Obligation of Conscience A. But it seems then that he makes the declaring or interpreting the meaning
of a Law and dispensing to be different things B. He had an excellent Metaphysical head and his Method of writing in that Chapter Of the Several ways of the changing of Humane Laws was partly after the Example of Suarez in his Book De Legibus and who was a voluminous Writer of Metaphysicks and writing of any Subject could not recedere ab arte suâ in that Learning that is so infinitely prolifick of Artificial distinctions without Natural differences I mention'd the Bishop's but PARTLY writing after the way of Suarez for he was far from crumbling the weightier Points of the Law into the Minutiae of Metaphysicks as the other did and he in his excellent Preface doth very passionately complain of Moral Theology having been made an Art of the Schools and that what God had made plain Men have intricated and for that purpose saith There is a Rule among the Lawyers which very much relates to the Conscience of those Men who are engaged in Suits and Sentences of Law in all Countrys which are ruled by the Civil Law in quolibet Actu requiritur Citatio of this Rule Porcius brings an hundred and sixteen Ampliations and an hundred and twenty four Limitations c. And thus Suarez in his 6th Book De Legibus and the Title of which Book is The Interpretation Cessation and change of Humane Laws hath there Twenty seven Chapters concerning the same and where his first Chapter is Of the way of rightly Interpreting an Humane Law his 2d Of the Extension in them by Interpretation of them and his 3d Of the Extension to a Case not Comprehended his 4th Doubts of the Extension of Laws his 5th Of the Restriction by Interpretation his 6th Of the Ceasing of the Obligation of a Law in particular Contrary to its words his 7th Of the Excusing of a Law by Equity his 8th Of the Use of Equity without recourse to the Prince his 9th Of the Ceasing of a Law upon its Cause ceasing his 10th Of Dispensation in an Humane Law his 11th Of the Effects of Dispensation his 12th Of the Material Cause of Dispensation his 13th Of the form of Dispensation and so on in the others with much Metaphysical subtlety But the Bishop in his before-mention'd Third Book and 6th Chapter viz. Of the Interpretation Diminution and Abrogation of Humane Laws brings in but seven ways of the changing of humane Laws so that the Obligation of Conscience is also changed whereof his first is by Equity His second is by Interpretation His third by a Contrary or a ceasing reason And his fourth by Dispensation c. and of which latter he saith If we use the word improperly Dispensation can signifie a Declaration made by the Superior that the Subject in certain Cases is not obliged that the Law-giver did not intend it c. but when Dispensation signifies Properly it means an Act of mere Grace and Favour proceeding from an extrinsick Cause that is not the Nature of the thing or the merit of the Cause but either the merit of the Person or some degrees of reasonableness in the thing which not being of it self enough to procure the favour of the Law is of it self enough to make a man capable of the Favour of the Prince c. But as here in this nice distinction he is enforced to make him who doth dispensare to do that which the Canonists make the ratio nominis of it namely diversa pensare and in the Scales of Equity to weigh and interpret the degrees of the reasonableness of the thing so in his handling of the Prince's Power of interpreting he makes Equity Co-incident with it and refers to the Law in the Code viz. Inter aequitatem jusque interpositam interpretationem nobis solis oportet licet inspicere and his instances of that Power of Interpretation are referr'd to the favours shew'd by it to Persons and particularly to Solomon's absolving Abiathar from the Sentence of Death because he had formerly done worthily to the Interests of his Father David And then saith Now this Power tho it may be done by Interpretation yet when it is administred by the Prince it is most commonly by way of Pardon absolute Power and Prerogative When a Law determines that under such an Age a Person shall be UNCAPABLE of being the General of an Army the Supreme Power can declare the meaning of the Law to be unless a great excellency of Courage and maturity of Iudgment supply the want of years in which very Case Scipio Africanus said wisely when he desir'd to be employ'd in the Punick War Se sat annorum habiturum si populus Romanus voluerit Thus Tiberius put Nero into the Senate at Fifteen years of Age and so did Augustus the like to Tiberius and his Brother and the People declar'd or dispens'd with the Law in Pompey ' s Case and allow'd him a triumph before he had been Consul or Praetor And he had before said When the Law-giver interprets his Law he doth not take off the Obligation of his Law i. e. meaning the Obligation of his Law in general but declares that in such a Case it was not intended to oblige Tacitus tells of a Roman Knight who having sworn to his Wife that he would never be divorced from her was by Tiberius dispens'd with when he had taken her in the unchaste Embraces of his Son-in-Law The Emperor then declared that the Knight had only obliged himself not to be divorced unless a great Cause should intervene And thus Suarez himself in his said 10th Chapter De Dispensatione in lege humanâ makes Dispensation apply'd to signifie an act quo quis ab obligatione legis eximitur and saith quia unus modus esse potest per Interpretationem ideo potuit etiam in eâ significatione usurpari tamen in hac etiam significatione sumpta non quamcunque interpretationem legis sed illam solam quae in casu dubio per potestatem superioris datur ad liberandum subditum ab obligatione legis significat quia haec tantum est Actus administrationis potestatis ADEO Commissae Et illa tantum tollit aliquo modo onus legis quod sine tali potestate auferri non posset and so saith he 't is agreed on by all that Dispensation is an Act of Iurisdiction but 't is drawn into the Law to signifie the taking away the vinculum of the Law in particular Cases and so we generally use it A. But Metaphysicks apart I shall not trouble my self about what is what but what is my Duty by virtue of my Oath And I observe that what you cited out of the Bishop viz. That when the Power that made the Law doth interpret the Interpretation is authentical c. may render him no favourer of an Interpretation not made in Parliament by the Legislative Power B. I shall sometime at our meeting again observe to you what the Bishop hath there asserted l. 3. c. 3. that Kings
For put the Case that the Clergy make Canons to which I never assented and I break these Canons whereupon I am Excommunicated and upon a Significavit by the Bishop my Body is taken and imprison'd by a Writ de excommunicato Capiendo now shall I lie in Prison all the days of my life and shall never be deliver'd by a Cautione admittenda unless I will come in and parere mandatis Ecclesiae which are point blank against my Conscience And he had before said A Comparatis by an Argument à minori ad majus if Property of Goods cannot be taken from me without my assent in Parliament which is the fundamental Law of the Land and so declared in the Petition of Right why then Property and Liberty of Conscience which is much greater as much as bona animi are above bona fortunae cannot be taken from me without my assent This it seems pass'd as Currant Coin for Iudgment of Parliament in behalf of Liberty of Conscience in the Conjuncture of 41 the year in which his Book was Printed and if it were so then allowable you may well think that a Prince's owning the Religion that flourish'd here in the time of Magna charta and which inspired the Virtue that produced Magna Charta and indulging some others of the same Religion to profess it without Punishment is not likely to occasion any durable ferment And what I have here referr'd to concerning the Petition of Right minds me of the great effort of Pious zeal in our famous Bishop Hall and his laudably making use of the Popularity he had among the Protestants in sending a Letter to the House of Commons April the 28th 1628. during the great ferment about that Petition and in which he gives so much fatherly and Prudent advice to the great Agonists for Property that they should consider when they were at the end of their race and then to sit down and rest He hath in it these tender Expressions Gentlemen For God's sake be wise in your well-meant zeal and our Liberties and Proprieties are sufficiently declared to be sure and legal c. let us not in suspicion of Evils that may be cast our selves into present confusion If you love your selves and your Country remit something of your own terms And since the Substance is yielded by your noble Patriots stand not too rigorously upon Points of Circumstance Pear not to trust a good King who after the strict Laws made must be trusted with the Execution c. relent or farewel welfare You may hence easily imagine how passionately that good Bishop would have been concerned if he had then seen among the Patriots any unquenchable heats about the not trusting the King with the Executive Power of Penal Laws and Laws in terrorem and such Laws as Mr. Glanvil in the ' Month after the Date of the Bishop's Letter said in a full Committee of both Houses That the Commons must and ever will acknowledge that it is in His Majesty's ABSOLUTE and undoubted Power to grant Dispensations in as I told you In God's Name often think of that great Patriotly saying of Tully so often with just Applause cited by Sir E. Coke Major haereditas venit unicuique nostrum à jure legibus quam à parentibus and you may account him a Prophane Person who despiseth his Birth-right given him by the Law. And pity any one who speaking of his Property doth not know this to be the meaning of it namely that it is the highest Right he hath or can have to any thing and which is no way depending upon another man's Courtâ—…e And consider that as you have a Property in your Chattels and Hereditaments so you have in your Religion Think often with honour of our Ancestors who by so many Acts of Parliament and lawful Canons and Constitutions since the Refoâ—…mation provided for the securing your Property in your Religion and remember how binding the very declarative Laws about it are Cast your Eye with Pleasure about the Realm and see if you can find any one who fears that any one will ever move in Parliament for leave to bring in any Bill to take away the least part of your Property in your Religion But then consider how Savage a thing it is in any to take excessive delight in the Execution of Penal Laws Ferus est qui fruitur paenâ and remember too that your Prince hath a Property in the Executive part of the Law and in distributive Justice and in shewing Mercy And when you hear any one telling you of a Snake in the grass of the Prince's dispensing with Penal Laws and that therefore there may be danger of your Prince's dispensing in Laws that are leneficial you may tell him of the notorious Non-sequitur and that you have a Property in not being punish'd and in having the benefit of the Rule as to favourable Statutes being made more so by interpretation Favores sunt â—…mpliandi and on the contrary as to Penal ones that odiosa restringi convenit And so to any such impertinent Objecter you may say that the voice or sound of his Snake and the Goose are all one But consider that since you have so much cause to depend on the glorious and consummate justice inherent in the nature of our great Monarch for his defending you in the security of all the Declaratory Acts of Parliament that maintain your very Property in your Religion both Iustice and Common Ingenuity call upon you to own his Power of Dispensing and even with disability for which I have shewn you so many clear and incontestable declarative Iudgments of Parliament and shall direct you to more when we meet again And let me tell you that you ought to have the greater tenderness for this Prerogative of our Prince for that in his Administration of it he hath in some Points shewn a greater tenderness to his Laws and People then our Princes since the Reformation have done You may remember I shew'd you how Queen Elizabeth and King Iames did by their Authority out of Parliament MAKE things Penal by Disability that were not so by any Law in being and therefore you may the less wonder when you see your Prince dispensing with it and thereby preventing the Punishment of it and sometimes and in some Cases pardoning it A. I shall carefully take notice of all these Matters wherein you have caution'd me but am here occasionally on the account of some things you said about the Interpretation and the Acquittal from Penalties in the Queen's Admonition being perpetuated by their being declared good in Parliament to ask you if you do not account that Dispensations or such Interpretations of the Prince by his own single Authority may be made to continue good in following Reigns B. I do not in the least doubt but they may and I shall hereafter evince the thing to you but shall at present out of a Manuscript Report I have of the great Case of
all his Subjects it might have sufficiently satisfy'd you therein and if at our next meeting you will have me dilate more on what our Lawyers have said about the Point of the debt of our Natural allegiance I shall do it A. Our great Lawyers Judgments in that Point being known may be variously useful and directive to the many illiterate and presumptuous Reflecters on the exercise of Prerogative and especially if so learned and so popular a Lawyer as Sir Edward Coke shall be by you further cited in such a Case And so what you shall acquaint me with as from any such one of them shall be kindly welcome B. What you have now said brings it into my mind how that Great popular Man Sir Edward Coke was cited for this purpose by that great popular Man Sir William Iones in his learned Argument in Thomas Dorcel's Case and where he did so much right to the DISPENSATIVE Power A. What Did Sir William Iones maintain the King's Power of Dispensing with Acts of Parliament B. Yes and I believe was never censured for so doing by any one A. I pray tell me what was said by him in his Argument B. Then according to the very Learned and Judicious and Candid Manuscript Report I have of the Case thus it was Among the three Points made the first being if the Non-obstante in the Patent of King James was good against the Statute of Edw. 6. Jones agreed that the King may by Non-obstante dispense with a thing Prohibited by Statute if the thing were lawful before the Statute were made And he afterward said that a Dispensation to one and his Heirs was never good but only in that of a Sheriff 2. H. 7. 6. Grant of a Shrievalty in fee Non-obstante the Statute But Coke 7. R. 14. Calvin's Case the Reason of that is because the King hath interest to have the Service of all his Subjects by the Law of Nature And the truth is that on this noble and great Consideration it is that our Divines who have treated of the OATH of SUPREMACY have fix'd the reasonableness and intent of that Oath and of the King 's having a right to Command the Obedience of all his Subjects upon the basis of the Law of Nature as well as on the Divine Law Positive And thus too the style of the Acts of Parliament about the Oath of Allegiance runs and which Acts you may Consult if you want any more Iudgments of Parliament about the indissolubility of the King 's right to Command the Obedience of the Subject and of the Subjects duty to obey before we meet again The reasonableness of the words in that Oath contain'd in the Statute of 3 tio Iacobi viz. Of declaring that the Pope hath no Power to discharge any of his Majesty's Subjects of their Obedience appears from its being call'd in that Statute their Natural Obedience And the putting in Practice the perswading or withdrawing any of the King's Subjects from their Natural Obedience to his Majesty or to reconcile them to the Pope or See of Rome is there made Treason We will speak more of other Statutes of this nature at our next meeting And in the mean time let me observe to you how as in the Conjuncture of the Exclusion so many were infatuated as for fear of Popery to come to run upon the very Court of Rome-Popery at present namely that of Dominium fundatur in Gratiâ so likewise many mens fear of the belief of perhaps some Religionary Tenets of Popery gaining ground for the future hath hunted them upon the Popery of thinking that Subjects CAN in part or in whole be discharged from their Natural Obedience to their Prince A. I thank you Sir for suggesting that to me for the truth is the tenet of thinking it lawful so to discharge Subjects from such their Natural Obedience is the very odiosa materia charged by so many on the Councel of Lateran B. You say right But however let me occasionally advise you not to charge the odious matter in that Councel on the Communion of the Church of Rome For I shall tell you that the great Writers of our Church did after the real Plot of the Gun-Powder-Treason pursue such noble Methods of Christian Charity as with an intent of improving the Principles of Loyalty and Allegiance among all our Roman-Catholick Countrymen to endeavour to prove with all their Learning that the Decrees of that Councel obliged no Papist in point of Conscience King Iames in his Works calls it but a Pretended Councel and Dr. Donne in his Pseudo-Martyr endeavours to prove it no Councel Moreover Bishop Bilson in his learned Works for maintaining the Oath of Supremacy saith that Nothing was Concluded in the Councel of Lateran I have here on the Table his Book call'd The Difference between Christian Subjection and Un-christian Rebellion Printed A. 1586 in which his Learned and Iudicious Assertions and Explications of the Regal Supremacy and of our Moral Offices to defend the same are comprised and there in Part 3. p. 6. you will find what he saith of the Lateran Councel A. I have not the Book and shall be glad I may borrow it from you that thereby I may have the better prospect of the Measures of our Divines in their Sense of the Assertory part of the Oath of Supremacy as making the Rights of our Kings to Command the Services of all their Subjects to be indissoluble B. I pray take it along with you And I am the rather desirous you should do it because in this Crooked and Perverse Generation many who strain their Consciences by the inobservance of the Oath may be so vain as to fancy that others strain the Oath who endeavour as I have done to build the Right of our Kings to Command the Services of their Subjects on its so firm Foundation He was trusted by the Government to write on the Subject of the Oath and so his Authority is of the more weight and I shall here at parting read to you what he saith in Part 2. p. 183. where he so well insinuates it that the Prince can freely permit safely defend generally restrain and externally punish within the Realm but in p. 328. having spoke of the true Supremacy of Princes he saith This is the Supremacy which we attribute to Princes that all Men within their Territories should obey their Laws or abide their Pleasures and that no man on Earth hath Authority to take their Swords from them by Iudicial Sentence or Martial Violence And he there had before said in his Margin the Sword of Princes is Supreme in that it is not Subject to the Pope and must be obey'd of all in things that are good What he saith likewise in p. 346. there is worth your reading where he makes the word Supreme to be a plain and manifest deduction out of the 13th of the Romans Let every Soul be subject to the Superior Powers If all Men must be subject to them ergo they are Superior to all and Superior to all is Supreme He then thus goeth on in his Dialogue-way Phil S. Paul maketh them Superiors over all Persons but not over all things Theop. That Distinction is ours meaning Protestants not yours we did ever interpret Supreme for Superior to all men within their Dominions Phil. And so we grant them to be but not in all things For in Temporal things they are Superior to all men in Spiritual they are not Theop. That restraint comes too late the Holy Ghost charging you to be subject to them simply without addition It passeth your reach to limit in what things you will and in what things you will not be subject And he there saith Out of all Question where Princes may by God's Law Command all men must obey them not only for fear of wrath but for Conscience sake To this purpose too he asserts the Supremacy in the following Page All men are bound to be subject to the Sword in all things be they Temporal or Spiritual not only by Suffering but also by Obeying but with this Caution that in things that are good and agreeable to the Law of God the Sword must be obey'd in things that are otherwise it must be endured At the same rate you will find him writing in his Third Part p. 7. The Word of God bindeth you to obey Princes the words of men cannot loose you But if you will there take notice of the fire of his Zeal breaking into a flame at the thoughts of the displacing of Princes from their Thrones and of the discharging of the People from the Oath and Obedience toward Princes he saith that they who will go to that turn Religion into Rebellion Patience into Violence Words into Weapons Preaching into Fighting Fidelity into Perjury Subjection into Sedition and instead of the Servants of God which they might be by enduring they become the Soldiers of Satan by resisting the Powers which God hath ordain'd A. I thank God I am a Member of the Church of England that may value it self not only on its Doctrine of NON-RESISTANCE but on its DOCTRINE of Positive ASSISTANCE and DEFENCE of all Iurisdictions Privileges Pre-eminences and Authorities granted or belonging to the King c. or united and annex'd to the Imperial Crown of this Realm B. And how from this great Promissory part of our Oath our Obligation to assist and defend the Iurisdiction Privilege Pre-eminence and Authority of the Dispensative Power in particular granted or belonging to the King and united and annex'd to the Imperial Crown of this Realm doth arise we will at our next meeting consider and when I will likewise shew you that the Prerogative royal is a part of the Lex terrae The End of the Second PART 1370. Ex Rot. Parl. in turr Lâ—…nd in 45. Ed. tertii Iustifiables in the French originals Quaere Whether not able todo justice or not to be juststify'd in their Employment as improper for it