same service what fortune ever fall by chance in the same Battle against the Mind and Will of the Prince as in this Land some time passed hath been seen that it is not reasonable but against all Law Reason and good Conscience that the said Subjects going with their Sovereign Lord in Wars attending upon him in his Person or being in other places by his commandment within this Land or without any thing should lose or forfeit for doing their true Duty and Service of Allegiance c That for the said deed and true Duty of Allegiance he or they be in no wise Convict or Attaint of high Treason ne of other Offences for that cause by Act of Parliament or otherwise by any Process of Law whereby he or any of them shall lose or forfeit Life Lands Tenements c. or any other things but to be for that Deed and Service utterly discharged of any vexation trouble or loss And if any Act or Acts or other Process of the Law hereafter thereupon for the same happen to be made contrary to this Ordinance that then that Act or Acts or other Process of the Law whatsoever they shall be stand and be utterly void 5 Provided always that no Person or Persons shall take any Benefit or Advantage by this Act which shall hereafter decline from his or their said Allegiance Which is to be understood of the King in being as the rest is and against the same King. To this Statute it is alledged That the Title of the Crown was then so ambiguous and uncertain that it was hard to know where the Right lay which is a meer Cavil The Title was as well known then as it is now and is a thing of that Nature that it can never be universally known but the greatest part of Mankind take those that are set over them without further inquiry nor is it reasonable any Man should suffer for obeying them whom he cannot nor ought to resist So that what some have said That every one is bound to take notice of the right Title at his Peril is true if the Person is in Possession but false if he is out of Possession Conquest a voluntary Surrender and a wilful Desertion of a Crown will put an End to the best founded Title in the World as I think is universally agreed so that if the Party pretending has a Title why is he not in Possession too if he is outed by his own Act I am absolved if by the Force and Power of another why then he is conquered and both waies especially if I had no hand in it I am and ought to be absolved before God and Man. But then not only the three Estates of England but all the Princes and Sovereign States in Christendom except the King of France have allowed King William and Queen Mary as the rightful Sovereigns of England which is a kind of giving Judgment against the late King after hearing what has been alledged on both sides So that this Case is determined by all the ways that are possible and must absolve any Man that submits now to that which is the only Supreme Power in England As to the Oaths taken to the late King they create no new Obligation upon us as to the Extent or Duration of our Allegiance I was under the same Obligations of Allegiance before I was sworn as I was afterwards and every Subject of England oweth by the Laws of England a natural Allegiance to his Prince before he is sworn as every Man ows naturally Obedience to God before he entreth into the Baptismal Covenant And so the Primitive Christians were under the same Obligation to their Princes we are tho' I do not find they ever swore any Allegiance to them 2. This Allegiance is no everlasting Obligation as to time Death a voluntary Resignation a wilful Desertion or a lawful Conquest will put an End to it 3. It is no wild unlimited Obedience whilst it lasteth but is plainly limited by the Laws of God and the Laws of the Land and if I obey further actively I am responsible to God and Man for it I come now to the Words of the Oaths which may seem to create any Scruple which in the Oath of Supremacy I suppose may be these I do promise that from henceforth I shall bear Faith and true Allegiance to the King's Highness his Heirs and Lawful Successors and to my Power shall assist and defend all Jurisdictions Priviledges Preheminences and Authorities granted or belonging to the King's Highness his Heirs and Successors or united and annexed to the Imperial Crown of this Realm Where first I observe No Man is bound beyond his Power but that all those who stuck to the late King till he left the Nation and another took Possession of his Place are thereby disabled and freed from attempting any further 2. That the Authorities I am to defend are such only as belong to the Crown of England by the Laws of England which are to limit my Allegiance but by the Law of England my Allegiance is now transferred to another and cannot be due to two in opposition each to other so that if I persist in my Allegiance to James II. I am punishable by these very Laws therefore my Allegiance which was a legal Allegiance is determined That in the Oath of Allegiance which may be objected is this I will bear Faith and true Allegiance to his Majesty his Heirs and Successors and him and them will defend to the uttermost of my Power against all Conspiracies and Attempts whatsoever which shall be made against his or their Persons their Crown and Dignity by reason or colour of any such Sentence or otherwise c. Now this Oath which binds us to the Person as the other did to the Power is capable of the same Limitation and is to be limited both as to its Duration and extent by the Laws of England and the Law of Nations and therefore is determinable the same way the other was The Power and uttermost Power reserved and expressed in these Oaths is a Legal Power and therefore no Man is by these Oaths bound to exert his Natural Power for any Prince when he may by the Laws of England be punished as a Traytor for so doing it being a Legal and not an Illegal Allegiance we promise by them If King James would have been contented with the Preheminences Priviledges Authorities and Jurisdictions granted and annexed or belonging to the Crown of England I believe no Body questions but he had been still King of England but by grasping at others which did not belong to him he cut off his own Succours and hindred those that otherwise would have defended him and them from doing it He would not be content with those that belonged to him and they could not fight for or defend any other and between these two his Power fell to the Ground by his own Default and his withdrawing put an End to his Sovereignty
attainting of many hundreds of the Nobility and Gentry of Ireland who were fled to England But the Town of London-Derry holding out and an Army being every Day expected from England the 18th of July this Parliament was prorogued till October And notwithstanding their Act for Liberty of Conscience and the dreadful Expectation of a sudden Revenge from England the Popish Clergy took possession of the Tithes and Church Revenues and many of the Protestant Clergy were clapt up in Prison in order to be sent into France All that our discontented Party here in England have to say to all this is That we must not believe all is told as out of Ireland but they mean That we must believe nothing of it but call in King James and try if he will use us at the same rate We have a Proverb That Experience is the Mistress of Fools and certainly none but such will come a second time under her Discipline when they have so lately tried it and see every Day hundreds of the Nobility Gentry and Clergy of Ireland flee hither to save their Lives with the loss of all besides who agree very exactly one with another in these dreadful Stories Now let it be considered That nothing was asked by the Bishops in their Proposals and by the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in their Petition of the 17th of November but a free and legal Parliament and the redress of our Grievances and that this was the principal thing insisted on by the Prince of Orange in his Declaration viz. That a free and legal Parliament might settle and adjust all things in Difference or Dispute and that it was obstinately refused till the 28 th of that Month and then granted when it could be no longer denyed the greatest part of the Nobility and Army being then gone over to the Prince Let also that Passage in the Proclamation of the 30th of November be considered For the reconciling all Publick breaches and obliterating the very Memory of all past Miscarriages We do hereby Exhort and kindly Admonish all our Subjects to dispose themselves to Elect such Persons for their Representatives in Parliament as may not be byassed by Prejudice or Passion but qualified with Parts Experience and Prudence proper for this Conjuncture and agreeable to the Ends and Purposes of this Our Gracious Proclamation And after this that by his Message of the 8th of December sent by the three Lords to the Prince of Orange He promised That he would consent to every thing that could be reasonably required for the security of those that came to it that is to the Parliament And that the 10th of December he sent for the Lord Mayor and Aldermen and Sheriffs of London to Whitehall and again passed his Word to them That though the Queen and Child were gone for France He would stay with them And though this Evening he received such an Answer from the Prince to his Proposals that he could not but acknowledge It was fairer than he could or did expect Yet after all these solemn ingagements he burnt the Writs for the Summoning a Parliament and went the very next Morning away for France as his Roman Catholick Friends had foretold he would above a fortnight before And who accordingly sent a Letter to him whilst he was at Salisbury perswading him to come back from thence and withdraw himself out of the Kingdom and leave it in confusion Assuring him That within two years or less the Nation would be in such Disorder that he might come back and have his Ends of it That is Ruine both our Civil Rights and our Religion When all these solemn promises were thus easily broken or rather never intended to be kept at the very time they were made and all those he has since made have been violated in Ireland where only he had power to keep or break his word what can we conclude but that as a Minister of State told our Planters It is very undecent not to say undutiful to tax this King with his Promises Who of all Mankind has shewn the least regard in time past to them and for time to come can never be blamed for any breach the Parties that take his word being alone responsible for their Incorrigible folly Some of these Men have confessed to me That if ever he be restored they expect to be treated as they were before without Truth Justice or Mercy but yet if it be his Right he must have it And they cannot think his Right can be determined but by Death or a voluntary surrender or a Conquest made by meer Foreigners to the utter Ruine of the English Nation And they will admit no Answer to these their Scruples but what shall be palpable convictive to that degree that they can make no Objection against it Now if they admit all the dreadful consequences that attend this relapse and yield up both Church and Nation to certain and inevitable ruine only that they may not be damned for Perjury and Disobedience to a King that has left them when he might have staied and now offereth to return and do what he then refused What shall we also consent and sacrifice our selves and our Posterity to the humour or scruples of these Men Shall we suffer the English Church Liberties and the very People of England to be destroyed to gratifie two or three hundred persons I have been told from good hands That one of our Bishops said Though he could not satisfie his own Scruples yet he thought the English Nation fools if ever they suffered King James to return and I may from hence reasonably conclude the far greatest part of our Scruplers are satisfied in the main and do heartily wish they could also be of the same mind with the rest of their Brethren in the rest so that the cause is half obtained against them and those that shall finally persist will I hope not meet with much Compassion it being scarce possible there should not be a very great deal of Will in so much blindness Our Neighbours abroad have observed with wonder That England was delivered from an Arbitrary Government which threatned the Ruine and Desolation of the whole Nation and the Destruction of our Religion without the shedding any of our Blood and that the Army of our Deliverer has committed no Disorder or Rapine in any of our Places through which it passed Now one would think the manner of our Deliverance were a Mercy almost equal to the Deliverance No they cry if King William the Third had entered England as William the First did and had slain fifty or sixty thousand English Men in a Battle then it had been a true Conquest and would have justified our submission and God would not have been offended with us if we had transferred our Allegiance from the beaten James to the Victorious King William Now if Men were like Beasts altogether distitute of the use of Reason and capable of no Reflection but the
terrour of a brandished and irresistable Sword then there might perhaps be some force in this reason but if a Man is conquered whenever he is brought to submit to another the Noblest as well as the most effectual Conquest is that of the Pen Swords conquer Bodies only Reason and Interest Justice and Mercy subdue Souls too and at once bring the whole Man under whereas Brutish force can triumph over none but the brutish half of a Man. A Lyon or a Woolf may master my Body and bring me under his power so that I neither can nor durst resist him but none but an Hero can bring me to a willing Submission when I am free none but an Hero would with his own hazard deliver me from Slavery when I were oppress'd St. Peter saith 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 By whom a Man is overcome him he must serve That is he cannot resist him and it is as true he whom I neither can nor durst resist has conquered me When James the Second was desired to leave Whitehall and go to Ham and sent to his now Majesty for leave to go rather to Rochester than to any other place It was a plain Confession he was no longer Free i. e. That he was brought into bondage and consequently that he was conquered if Conquest be nothing but the depriving a Man of the power of resisting as I take it to be and that Servitude or Bondage is nothing but the effect of that deprivation And in his Letter from Rochester he saith He did not think it convenient to expose himself to be secured so as not to be at liberty to effect it to redeem the Nation from Slavery and for that reason to withdraw c. That is he left England because as long as he staied in it he was a Captive and liable to be secured And by consequence he was conquered The Roman Catholicks too and those few of the Church of England who still adhere to him were conquered by force of Arms for they durst not resist nay they durst not Print the Reasons why they will not comply which is a plain Confession they are subdued The rest of the Nation too was conquered not by the Sword but by the Justice of his Arms and his Kindness to a miserable enslaved People designed for Ruine And after all this to query whether it is a real Conquest is very absurd But every Conquest will perhaps not create a just and good Title but here it is confessed the present King had the most just cause to make a War upon James the Second that ever Man had by them who scruple to submit to him He managed this War also with the utmost justice he did not enter into it till he had tried all other ways to obtain Justice and was denied it and persecuted into boot he offered to submit all his pretences to an English Parliament and when that was rejected he managed the War with so exact a disciplie with so little injury to the rest of the Nation that the want of the effects of War Blood and Rapine is objected against his Victory Every Man has not the Right of making a Conquest a Subject that rebels against his Prince is but a Victorious Traytor if he prevail but William the Third was a Sovereign Prince when he entered England and by the Law of Nations had a right to vindicate his and his Ladies Injuries and obtain by the Sword what he could not get by a fair Treaty But to what end is War allowed at all if the Cause and the Effect must be separated and the most just War in the end leave the Conqueror in the same state he was before No but all Subjects Right or Wrong are bound to stand by their Lawful Princes in their most unjust Quarrels and if at last they are subdued their Allegiance must be reserved for the injurious beaten Prince till he die or freely resign that is Victorious Sovereign Prince and a Prosperous Rebel and a just and an unjust War shall according to these Men's Notion have the same effect Evagrius in his Apology for the Christian Religion against Zozimus the Pagan Historian thus bespeaks him Let us if you please Sir consider the ends of those Princes who imbraced the Pagan Superstition and the Deaths of those Princes that were Christians Did not Caius Julius Caesar the first of them that obtained the Empire of Rome perish by Treachery And was not Caius Caligula Murthered by his own Souldiers Was not Nero slain by one of his own Servants Did not Galba Otho and Vitellius all perish by the Sword in the space of sixteen Months Did not Domitian poison his Brother Titus and then he himself fall by the Sword of one Stephanus What will you say of Commodus Did not Narcissus lay violent hands upon him And did not Pertinax and Julian fall by the same means Antoninus the Son of Severus slew Geta his Brother and soon after fell by the Sword of Martialis himself Was not Macrinus the Emperour taken Captive by his own Souldiers and being led about the Streets of Byzantium afterwards was he not most Traiterously slain by them Aurelius Antoninus the Emperour who was born at Emisa a City of Syria was slain with his Mother To what end should I speak of Maximinus who was slain by his own Souldiers Of Gordian who fell by the Swords of his too who were stirred up to it by Philip And were not Philip and Decius both slain by their Foreign Enemies Gallus and Velusianus by their own Armies And had not Aemilian the same Fate Was not Valerian taken prisoner and carried about by the Persians till he died Was not Galienus the Son of Valerian slain by Treachery and Carinus beheaded and so the Empire fell into the hands of Dioclesian and those he associated to him in the Empire of which Maximianus Herculius and his Son Maxentius and Licinius all fell by the Sword But from the time Constantine a Christian Prince became Emperour to this see if you can find any one who has reigned in Constantinople except Julian the Apostate and Valens the Emperour who have fallen by the hands of their own Subjects or of Foreigners who both so grieviously afflicted the Christians nor has any Tyrant usurped against any of our Princes except Basiliscus who rose up against Zeno the Emperor and drove him from his Palace but was afterwards overcome by Zeno and put to death You cannot assign any other Emperor but these two that was slain in all this time This happened in the Year of Christ 476. And Licinius was put to death in the Year 325. So that in the space of 151. Years no Christian Prince had been Deposed or Murthered by Domestick or Foreign Enemies in the East And whereas I observed before in the latter times of the Pagan Superstition in the space of 110. Years there were twenty nine Emperors in this period which makes 151 Years there was but twelve of which