Selected quad for the lemma: death_n
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A26195
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The arraignment of rebellion, or, The irresistibility of sovereign powers vindicated and maintain'd in a reply to a letter / by John Aucher ...
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Aucher, John, 1619-1701.
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1684
(1684)
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Wing A4191; ESTC R14611
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67,159
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122
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we may lead peaceable and quiet lives Who must therefore necessarily have Jus gladii the Power of the sword whereby to furnish them for this end They and none but They and so are irresistible does plainly mutilate and Null the Government dissolve the Body and leave us as we were single and divided Persons Non jam aedes sed cumulus exit We may be a heap indeed but not a house not a building not a Body For no Body can be legally and naturally at variance with its self This being that which distinguishes one Body and so one Government from another England from Spain Spain from France c. And to say That in every Government the people are still the ultimate Judges and Arbitratours is to say One of these Two Either that there is no other Government but Popular or that Order and Government is the very same thing with Ataxie and Confusion For as in a Popular state it were perfectly unlawfull and the mother of Confusion to follow one Prince-ringleader or some few of the Nobles in opposition to the Major part of the People So it is the same thing in a Monarchy or Kingdom to be sure upon the peoples account more or less to rise up and rebell against the King 'T is true that in either state I am not to obey an unjust command Herein I am already prepossessed and prevented by God But this is no infringing of the Sovreignty of our Rulers which must onely be acknowledged under God And while I reserve to execute or actively obey them in sin I still preserve my fidelity to God disavow my self the servant of men And yet by submitting to the penalty I preserve the end and design of Government viz. peaceable and quiet living and set the Governours upon their proper Thrones Solo Deo minores All which is overthrown by resistence The Governours displac'd by setting my self above them or at least in an Independency and equality with them which is necessarily supposed in resistence Government casheir'd and render'd inffectual And as the Jews when in opposition to Christ they were very zealous for the honour of their Master Moses and their own freedom for that they were freeborn never were in bondage say they to any man did therein especially dishonour Moses and enslave themselves So we make our selves purely the slaves and servants of men by engaging with them in an unlawfull resistence though in pretence of our liberty And never more highly deny and dishonour Christ than when in this kind of way we pretend most to his honour and service by despising that Government and these Governours whom God the Father as I may so say has sanctifyed and sent into the world For so Government and Magistracy were absolutely erected by God in the first Creation giving the Sovreignty to Mankind over the rest of his workmanship And again in the distinction and differencing of Sexes Man had the Sovreignty over the Woman determin'd upon him by his primogeniture or being first formed as the Apostle argues For Adam was first formed then Eve And so manifestly before the fall and no mishapen piece of corrupt Nature And again in the production and procreation of Children the Parents had a Sovreignty and Dominion over those that were begotten by them Which how limited and confin'd soever it were for that it seems all this while not to reach unto life The power of Life and Death being reserved in God's hand and as his peculiar was yet certainly in every Species of it sacred and irresistible to those that were under it And now when after the Floud which came upon the Old world for their sins and because there was no Magistrate effectually to curb them and cut them off admonitions and stripes the family discipline being much too gentle to restrain their violence it pleased God in prevention of the like for the time to come as he assured by a Rainbow to enlarge the Commission even over the Life and to the shedding the bloud of a capital offender Whosoever sheddeth mans bloud by man shall his bloud be shed Yet this was still Salvo regimine without any power lawfully in the People either to rise up against him when he did so or to sit in Judgment against him when he neglected to doe so and from a Judge should debase himself into a Malefactour This appears evidently by the words and Tenure of his Commission For as the Magistrates power over life and death is acknowledged by all in these words So his impunity likewise as to the People though he should be Socius criminis and guilty of the same Crime will easily be deriv'd from the same Fountain And as the Apostle argues that when the Scripture says in these words All things are put under Christ it is manifest that he is excepted who did put all things under him So there is the same Reason and Manifesto likewise that in these words Whosoever sheddeth mans bloud by man shall his bloud be shed The avenger of bloud the man that is to shed the bloud of the bloud-shedder should absolutely be exempted from it Who else must be supposed to be under those whom in that very Term or Title he is apparently set over The avenging of their bloud being the plain Ensign of his Sovreignty over them As the Father in being said to put all things under the Son does therein appear to be above him And therefore how universally affirmative soever the Propositions may seem to be All things are put under Christ and Whosoever sheddeth mans bloud c. Yet they are both to be restrained to their proper subjects and such a truce to be held with the Terms and parts of the proposition All and Whosoever as not to contradict and make war against the Tenure and Design of the whole Which being once secured and sav'd harmless we cannot stretch them beyond their measure But All things absolutely All things are to be put under Christ save the Father And Whosoever sheddeth mans bloud whether Person or People save the Avenger of bloud himself here is ample Authority to cut them off And if this may serve for Government in the general and to evince an irresistibility necessarily flowing from the nature and being of it the Supreme Power in every Oeconomy whatsoever in that it is the Supreme Power being not possibly lyable to the Inferiour or such as derive from it we will see next what malignant influence there is in Monarchy or where this supreme power is in one man as with us by Law it is established that should quite overthrow the good of Government and pervert it as you complain into the uneasiness and unsupportableness of a Babylonian bondage And truely if God might be allowed any share or proportion of wisedom but equal to the conceits which we have of our own Understandings we should not thus hastily assume against that Form which he was pleased to erect among his own people
an evident mark of God's Ordination whereby this Power is convey'd to a Person and how we shall know it God's Lordship and Sovreignty over us does originally arise from the right of a Creatour In that he is the cause and authour of our being he must necessarily have an absolute dominion over us who are produced and created by him It is he that hath made us and not we our selves says the Psalmist And then it follows regularly in the next words We are his people c. And as he was pleas'd not to produce all men as he did Adam solely and immediately by Himself though he had the residue of the Spirit as the Prophet speaks but to take in man as a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and Copartner with him in the production of the rest deriving them by Generation one from another He has hereby admitted man likewise into a partnership of his Sovreignty made him naturally a Sovreign over those who receive their being and production from him And thus Parents are petty gods in relation to their children And children have the obligation of creatures upon them in respect unto their Parents And this not onely to their next and immediate parents who beget them but upon the same Tenure for Causa causae est causa causati to their Parent 's Parents Avus Proavus Tritavus Grandfather Great-grandfather and so upwards Every one in the whole Category and Succession of them being a Subalternum genus That is to say a Power in respect of those under them but a Species and Subject still in respect of the Summum Genus the Supreme Parent from whom they flow and by whom they are sent And thus a Family becomes a Kingdom and the King or Pater patriae Father of the Countrey is the very Paterfamilias Master of the Family And as Noah if he were still alive would certainly be Rex Catholicus not in Title onely but in Truth the Catholick or Universal Monarch of the whole World as being the Father of all the Families and Kingdoms now in being So this Universal Monarchy must necessarily expire upon his death and become divided as it was between his three Sons Shem Ham and Japhet None of them being a Father and therefore not a King over the other but every one a Father and absolute in his own Family Shem the elder brother being still but a Brother and so though he had many privileges and priorities even a double portion above the rest as due by his Birthright Yet not necessarily or by the law of Nature to succeed into a paternal power over his brethren no more than he could be a natural Father to them And as here began the distinction of Kings and Kingdoms in these three Brethren and their Families So they all multiplying into many Sons and those Sons into many more who were all after their Fathers deaths as their Fathers before them had been absolute and Independent Monarchs over their respective children Every Family being still a several Kingdom it must needs be that in process of time among so many Kings and Kingdoms all absolute and independent from one another there could not but fall matter of continual and endless Controversie Every lesser Family oppress'd by the greater Every difference with a Neighbour being onely determinable by the sword and to be managed by a bloudy war For the avoiding of which great inconvenience manifestly arising from the multiplicity of Kings and Kingdoms we must suppose That either admonished by God or prompted by right Reason these several Fathers of Families so many of them as were adjoyn'd by any nearness of place and Kindred meeting together in one body and others in another and so of the rest did give up this their absolute power which they had severally before over their own Families into the hands of some one person incorporating themselves and their Families into his Family adopting themselves his children and by uniting their several paternal powers in him alone did thereby make and acknowledge him the common Father of them all And that not personally onely or with limitation to his particular self For then at his death they must have return'd to the same inconveniences as before Which by the greater increase of Families would then become much greater and which therefore they were concern'd the rather and with greater diligence to prevent but to his Heirs after him So making his Family to be a Family of Fathers in their several generations to them and their Families for ever And that this is indeed the true original of Kings and Monarchs all particular paternal powers being really transferr'd and united in them is very evident as Mr. Diggs observes Because else we should be bound to obey our Fathers commands before those of the Kings For divine precept stands in full force Honour thy Father c. Which being as St. Paul says the first commandment with promise and the first in the second Table does certainly in its own weight and obligation and so ought to do in our value and observance out-strip all other after Commandments of the same Nature with it or relating to Man And were not therefore to be set lower in the least by honouring and obeying the King before our Father if it were not certain that the King is more our Father than our Father that does beget us Tam pater nemo est in terris No man is so much our Father as the King And to whom therefore the honour enjoyn'd us towards our Father does most eminently and in the first place upon that very account belong But if this derivation of Kingly Power should not become perhaps so plain and intelligible to ordinary apprehensions as too far removed out of their sight I shall endeavour in a new draught to bring it nearer and by clear and evident instances to facilitate the understanding of it God doth impower a Person or call and ordain him to power by two manner of ways Either mediately or immediately Immediately and by himself so he called Aaron to the Priesthood Saul and after him David to the Kingdom mediately or by right from these as Eleazar and his Sons after him succeeded to Aaron So Solomon and his Sons after him succeeded David in the Kingdom Though all these may be rather said to be immediately call'd by God in as much as in the first investiture and conferring authority on Aaron and David the promise and so the Power was made to them and their seeds for ever Which yet while it was immediately done by God was never so immediately done by him as not to take in the Ministery of men for the doing of it even some known authentick Prophet to convey this message to call and consecrate the person to this authority Thus Moses by God's appointment settles the Priesthood upon Aaron and Samuel the Kingdom upon David And whoever will derive from this claim even this immediate call from God must not pretend I know not