and Son of Impiety and Injustice Edmund the Great Earl of Kent with some other persons began to Conspire against them Which Q. Isabel who deserves the name of Jesabel perceiving privately encouraged the Keepers of her Husband to murder him but his Son coming to Maturity of Understanding avenged his blood on Mortimer his Mother's Minion and his Accomplices whom the Lords of Parliament with his assent adjudged and condemned to be executed as Traitors for murdering the King after he was deposed The Queen her self also had like to have been questioned and in the Roll 4 Edw. III. which gives an account of this matter he is stiled by all the Lords and the young King himself their King and Leige Lord. And in the 21 R. II. N. 64 65. the Revocation of the Act for the two Spencers Restitution in the Parliament of 1 Edward III. was repealed because made at such a time by King Edw. III. as his Father being very King was Living and Imprisoned These two Acts of Parliament Doctor do not at all agree with your Reasonings for the Providential King but they agree most exactly with the Reasonings of Some Men which you say contradicts the general sense of Mankind For as Mr. Pryn well observes they shew that Edw. II. was King de jure or King in the Eye of the Law as much after his Deposition as before it and by consequence that his Deposition by the Estates who had no Authority to Depose him was a void Act and if he was very King when he was in Prison and his Regnant Son's King and Leige Lord at the time of his murder as the aforesaid Acts declare him then Doctor I fear it will follow that a pure Providential K. in Possession is no King at all 11. But from this Usurpation let us pass to that of Henry IV. who was set up by Providence and the Estates of the Realm who took upon them to depose Richard II. and place Henry in his Throne But Henry being conscious to himself that he wanted Legal Right though he had all the Right that Providence could give him yet not daring to trust to such an airy Tite nor his false pretences of being the right Heir caused Richard to be murdered but between his Deposition and Murder Thomas Merks Bishop of Carlisle a Brave and Godly Prelate preferring his Duty before his Safety took the courage to make a Speech in Parliament against the Validity of Richard's Deposition and the Justice of Henry's Election and if you please Doctor to read this Speech as it is at large in our Historians you will find in spight of all your prejudice that he was a very Wise and Considering Man and entirely of these Mens Opinion and produced those Reasons for it which you say Contradict the general sense of Mankind in all Revolutions The first part of his Speech is to prove that a King may not be deposed by his Subjects for any imputation of negligence and Tyranny and to make this out clearly he brings an ugly Arbitrary distinction betwixt Kings in a Popular or Consular State which really have not Regal Rights but are subject to a Superior Power and Kings in whom the Sovereign Majesty is as it formerly was in the Kingdoms of Israel and Judea c. and now is in the Kingdoms of England Spain France and Scotland c. in which the Sovereignty or Supream Authority is in the King After this distinction which Some among us now use he asserts that in such Kingdoms where the Sovereignty is by Law in the King although the Prince for his Vices be unprofitable to his Subjects yea hurtfull yea intollerable yet they cannot lawfully harm his Person or hazard his Power by Judgment or by Force because neither one nor all the Magistrates have any Authority over him from whom all Authority is deriv'd and whose only presence doth silence and suspend all inferior Jurisdictions and Power and as for force saith he what Subject can attempt assist or counsel or conceal Violence against his Prince and not incurr the high and heinous Crime of Treason Then he proceeds to prove this as you do in your Case of Non-resistance from Examples of Saul and Ahab in the Old Testament and many Texts of Scripture Then he proceeds to answer the great Objection thus Doth the King enjoyn Actions contrary to the Law of God We must neither wholly Obey nor violently Resist but with a constant courage submit our selves to all manner of Punishment and shew our subjection by enduring and not performing Oh how shall the World be pestered with Tyrants if Subjects may Rebel upon every pretence of Tyranny How many good Princes may be suppressed by those by whom they ought to be supported If they Levy a Subsidy or other Taxation it shall be claimed Oppression if they put any to Death for Traiterous attempts against their Persons it shall be exclaimed Cruelty if they do any thing against the lust and liking of the People it shall be proclaimed Tyranny Having shew'd as his words are that King Richard was deposed without Authority Then he proceeds to shew that Henry had no Title First Not as Heir to Richard which he pretended for then he ought to stay till King Richard was dead but then if K. Richard was dead it was well known there were Descendents from Lionel Duke of Clarence whose Offspring had been declared in the High Court of Parliament next Successor to the Crown in case K. Richard should die without Issue Secondly Not by Conquest because a Subject can have no right of Conquest against a Sovereign where the War is Rebellion and the Victory High Treason Nor thirdly by K. Richard's Resignation because he made it in Prison where it was exacted of him by force and therefore it had no force or validity to bind him Nor last of all by Election for saith he we have no Custom that the People at pleasure should Elect their King but they are always bound unto him who by Right of Blood is Rightfull Successor much less can they make good or confirm that Title which is before Usurped by violence Then he saith that the deposing of Edw. II. which the Barons produced for an Example to depose Richard was no more to be urged than the Poisoning of K. John or the Murdering any other lawful Prince and that we must live according to Laws and not according to Example and that the Kingdom however then was not taken from the lawfull Successor Then after saying many other things he concludes thus I have declared my mind concerning this Question in more words than your Wisdom yet fewer than the weight of the Cause requires and boldly conclude that we have neither Power nor Policy either to depose King Richard or to Elect Duke Henry into his Place and that K. Richard still remaineth our Sovereign Prince and that it is not lawfull for us to give Judgment upon him and that the Duke whom you call King
hath more offended against the King and the Realm than the King hath done against him or us Thus Sir spoke that Heroick Prelate in the Court of Parliament and his practice was answerable to what he spoke For he chose not the safer but the juster side as all good Men ought to do He knew while he spoke that Bonds and Persecutions would attend him nevertheless he spoke freely and after speaking was committed to Prison and after that was crushed with many other brave Men by the Usurper against whom they rose up Afterwards about the sixth year of his Reign Rich. Scroop A. B. of York with the L. Maubray Marshal of England H. Piercy E. of Northumberland L. Bardolf and * As I suppose the Earls of Salisbury Huntington Glocester the Lords Clarenden Roper with divers other Knights and Esquires and after that the Lord Thomas Piercy Earl of Worcester and Lord Henry Piercy Son and Heir to the Earl of Northumberland many others published an Excommunication and †In the first Volume of Fox's Acts and Monuments in the Reign of H. IV. Remonstrance consisting of several Articles against Henry which they fixed upon the doors of Churches and Monasteries to be read of all It begins thus IN THE NAME OF GOD Amen Before the Lord Jesus Christ Judge of the quick and the dead We not long since became bound by Oath upon the Sacred Evangelical Book unto our Sovereign Lord Richard late King of England that we as long as we lived should bear true Allegiance and Fidelity towards him and his Heirs succeeding him in the Kingdom by just Title Right and Line according to the Statutes and custom of this Realm have here taken unto us certain Articles subscribed in form following to be proponed heard and tried before the just Judge Christ Jesus and the whole World but if which God forbid by Force Fear or Violence of wicked Persons we shall be cast in Prison or by violent death be prevented so as in this World we shall not be able to prove the said Articles as we wish then we do appeal to the High Coelestial Judge that he may judge and discern the same in the day of his Supream Judgment First We depose say and except and intend to prove against Lord Henry Darby commonly called King of England himself pretending the same but without all Right and Title thereunto and against his Adherents Fautors Complices that they have ever been are and will be Traitors Invaders and destroyers of God's Church and of our Sovereign Lord Richard late King of England his Heirs his Kingdom and Commonwealth as shall hereafter manifestly appear In the second Article they declare him forsworn perjured and excommunicate for that he conspired against his Sovereign Lord King Richard In the fourth they recite by what wrong illegal and false means he exalted himself into the Throne of the Kingdom and then describing the miserable State of the Nation which followed after his Usurpation they again pronounce him Perjured and Excommunicate In the fifth Article they set forth in what a barbarous and inhumane manner Henry and his Accomplices imprisoned and murdered K. Richard and then cry out Wherefore O England arise stand up and avenge the Cause the Death and Injury of thy King and Prince if thou do not take this for certain that the Righteous God will destroy thee by strange Invasions and Forreign Power and avenge himself on thee for this so horrible an Act. In the seventh they depose against him for putting to death not only Lords Spiritual and other Religious Men but also divers of the Lords Temporal there Named for which they pronounce him Excommunicate In the ninth they say and depose that the Realm of England never flourished nor prospered after he Tyrannically took upon him the Government of it And in the last they depose and protest for themselves and K. Richard and his Heirs the Clergy Commonwealth of the whole Realm that they intended neither in Word nor Deed to offend any State of Men in the Realm but to prevent the approaching Destruction of it and beseeching all Men to favour them and their Designs whereof the first was to exalt to the Kingdom the true and lawfull Heir and him to Crown in Kingly Throne with the Diadem of England Upon publishing these Articles much people resorted to the Archbishop but he being circumvented by the Earl of Westmoreland who pretended to join with him dismissed his Forces at his persuasion upon which he was immediately made Prisoner and beheaded at York with the Earl Marshal and divers York shire Gentlemen and Citizens of York who had joined with him The Earl of Northumberland and Lord Bardolph escaped and held out two years longer before they were crushed by the Usurper but at last they were both slain Fighting in the Field against him You see Doctor in this Remonstrance how the Archbishop and Lords that joined with him contrary to the general sense of Mankind unking'd this Providential King for want of a Legal Title and Remonstrated against him as a Perjured Traytor and Vsurper and when he lay upon his Death-bed he himself also began to be of their Opinion contrary to the general sense of Mankind when his guilty Conscience forced him to tell his Son That he had no good Title to the Crown but he not inferior to his Father in Ambition snatched it from his Pillow and plainly told him That as he had got it by the Sword so by the Sword he would keep it And in truth Doctor your Title by Providence against Law is Sword Title and your Providential Kings Sword-Kings for in all Kingdoms the Sword is King where their lawfull Prince is not the Sword or Supream Force Rules all and that Supream Crushing Force which by God's permission gets and keeps possession makes your Providential Kings 12. I have hitherto shewed you what Opinion many Wise and Considering Men had of Henry IV. and his Reign for want of Legal Right and Title And I now proceed to shew the sense that a whole Parliament had of him and of his Son and Grand-Son's Succession the latter sitting in the Throne This appears from Roll. Parl. 39 Henry VI. as it is in Cotton's Abridgement or rather from the Record at large as it is to be seen as it was lately printed in an Answer by a skillful and faithful hand to The unreasonableness of the new Separation upon account of the Oaths This Roll gives an account how Richard Duke of York Father of Edward IV. brought to the Parliament Chamber in writing not a Petition but a Claim to the Crown of which Henry had been long fully and quietly possessed and his Title which was only Succession by Birth-right being fully made appear it was the Opinion of all the Lords that it could not be defeated That single Title by Proximity of Blood was thought sufficient to supersede all the patch'd Titles of Henry and all that could be said in
King and by supposing in the next Paragraph That it was lawfull in a limitted Monarchy But is this the way of arguing against Resistance which not long ago was such a damnable sin especially on the 30th of January I protest to you Dr. should I hear you speak at this tender rate from the Pulpit against Adultery I should think you had a design upon some Ladies in the Congregation and that you intended they should understand by you that you thought it no sin Formerly on the 30th of January Resistance was a most damnable sin and the Doctrine of it Popish Diabolical Doctrine and the sin of the day was the Murder of a King but now it seems Dr. you will not dispute the lawfulness of resisting the King it may be lawfull for any thing you know to the contrary even on the 30th of January the sin of which day now it seems P. 19. lies in the Murder of a Good King who kept the Laws and was a Zealous Patron of the Church of England of a King of such Virtues as are rarely found in meaner Persons nay which would have adorned an Hermet's Cell But had he been a King that had broken the Laws and stretch'd his Prerogative to set up an Ecclesiastical Commission against the Church of England then the killing of him had been no Murder at least no such barbarous Murder But Dr. at this rate of Preaching on the 30th of January Kings and Queens had need take care of themselves for I do not see but they are upon their Behaviour Quam diu bene se gesserint and do not break the Laws but if they do so let them do it at their peril xxix p. 21. For every irregularity in their motions is soon felt and causes very fatal Convulsions in the State or as a much better Subject said by way of Apology for Charles I. There is no time past Judge Jenkins in his Works p. 28. present nor will there be time to come so long as Men manage the Laws but the Laws will be broken more or less So Dr. in your Temple-Sermon to exhort us to pray for Kings you tell us That it is very difficult to govern a Family xxix p. 24 25 26. and that Princes are liable to mistakes like other Men and that they are exposed to misinformations by Court-Flatterers and subject to greater Temptations than other Men But Dr. If it be lawfull to take up Arms against the King in a limitted Monarchy which you were contented to suppose before the House and others of your Brethren plainly assert then God help Kings of such Monarchies xxx p. 23. especially where the Springs and Fountains of Government are poysoned and where the Nation is already divided into Parties both in Church and State Such Kings be they by Providence only or Law and Providence together it matters not they had need look to their hits when their best pretended Friends are willing to suppose it is lawfull to take up Arms against them All your Apologies and Panegyricks upon their Majesties and Exhortations to pray for them can never make them amends for such a supposition and they must indeed stand in need of more and better Prayers than yours if they have no better a Title to the Crown than that of Possession which you have found out for them and that too no longer than they keep the Laws 4. These Dr. to use your own Language are very loose Notions of Government and Obedience and dangerous at such a time as this when so many Malecontents in both Kingdoms complain of the breach of Laws See h. If you will go to Scotland you shall hear two sort of discontented Men clamour loudly against the Government the Jacobite Episcoparians and the Presbyterians the latter are so impudent as to charge King William down right with the breach of the Original Contract and the former complain of torturing Strangers against Law and the Articles of Government of exercising illegal and unheard of Severities upon the complying Clergy worse than Dragooning of abolishing Episcopacy and thereby altering the Constitution of the Government and of the Murder and Massacre of a Laird and his Clan in cold blood after they had laid down their Arms and submitted to the Government And you cannot be ignorant of the Complaints which are made at home by restless and disaffected Spirits of pretended Illegal and Arbitrary Commitments of Men for High Treason and not to mention the Reflections which have been made in and out of Parliament upon Mr. Ashton's Trial you cannot but hear what a din this grumbling and disaffected Faction make of excessive Fines and Bail contrary as they clamour to our English Liberties and the Articles of Government And they bring one Example among others of a poor Boy about thirteen years old who was Arraign'd and Try'd at the Old-Baily and condemned to the Pillory and after he endured this Discipline and many other cruel hardships was Fined at the Court of the Old-Baily above threescore times more than he and his Parents are worth Sir These things considered you should have thundered with your old Zeal and demonstrations against Resistance as a damnable sin and taught Submission and Obedience to their Majesties upon the account of their Office and Character and not purely upon the account of their Virtues as you used to do in former Sermons And let me tell you Dr. that the most effectual way of serving their Majesties in the Pulpit and especially on the 30th of January is to Preach up the unconditional Duty of Subjects to Kings as Kings xxx p. 23. whether they be good or bad This was the Strict Loyalty and Obedience which you tell us was so earnestly pressed on the Consciences of Men before the Revolution and made the People so passive in it But by your favour Dr. not so passive for not to put you in mind of the vast numbers in the West and the North Mrs. Sherlock her self sent in a Man and Horse to the assistance of the Prince of Orange and whether it was with your Connivance or Approbation God and your own Conscience can best tell But however that was this is certain that it is most for the Interest of Princes as well as most becoming Divines to set the King as a King and not as an Hero before the People and to convince their Consciences of the inviolable Duty which results from their relation to him as Subjects independant of his moral Qualities but the other way of Preaching which you have taken up serves only to beget a precarious and doubtful sense of Duty in the People who as your Sermon before the House shews can soon be made to have the worst Opinion of the best of Kings 5. The Sandersons and Hammonds of former times who guarded the Pulpit from all suspicion of Flattery would never have Preached so much in commendation of their Royal Masters as you have Preached in the praise
favour of him from the Oath of Allegiance which the People had made to him from divers Acts of Parliament whose Authority was laid against his Title from the Entail of the Crown made by the Parliament upon his Father and his Heir and lastly from his Grandfather's Claim to the Crown as right Inheretor from Henry III. which Richard proved to be false And here Doctor I cannot but observe unto you that among all the Pleas which Henry and his Counsellors made use of to defeat Richard's Title they never thought of your Divine Title from Providence being so infatuated as not to attend to the General Sense of Mankind Wherefore Doctor either your Principles of Government are not the general Sense of Mankind or this Providential King with his Privy-Council and Great Council in Parliament were all bewitch'd that they could not think of them to stop the Duke of York's Mouth He advised with the greatest Divines and with the greatest Men both among the Common and Civil Lawyers and yet not one of them suggested the Title of Providence or full Providential Possession but had they hit upon it and urged it Richard would have answered them as he did to their Plea taken from their Oaths viz. that God's Commandments which prefer Right and Truth and Justice and not the Events of Providence are the Rule for them to walk by and that all Acts of the Estates against Law Truth and Justice are void and of no effect The same is as true of all Possession against Law Truth and Justice let it come by never such amazing Providences and therefore Doctor either your Notion of Providential Right is not agreeable to the general sense of Mankind or else Henry and his whole Council were out of their Wits and common Senses not to perceive it but in truth Doctor it became the general Sense of Mankind only since the Victory of the Boyn made it become yours From this Judgment of the Parliament 39 Hen. VI. I send you to the Judgment of another 1 Edward IV. which after reciting the Lineal Title of Edward Son of Richard Duke of York from Lionel Duke of Clarence and declaring how Henry Darby did rear War against Richard II. contrary to his Faith and Allegiance 2dly That he took upon him Usurpously the Crown and Name of King King Richard being in Prison and living 3dly That against God's Law Man's Legiance and Oath of Fidelity and in a most unnatural Tyranny he put him to Death They then declare That Edward rightfully amoved Henry VI. from his Occupation Intrusion and Vsurpation of the Realm and that he and no other ought to be their Lord and Sovereign by God's Law Man's Law and the Law of Nature and that Henry Darby called K. Hen. IV. his Son called K. Hen. V. and his Son called K. Henry VI. had against all Law Conscience and Custom of the Realm usurped the Crown and exercised the Government by unrighteous Intrusion and Vsurpation and if they did so then they had no Providential Divine Right I must also observe unto you that it was in this King's Reign that the distinction between the K. de facto to signifie the Usurper and the K. de jure to signifie the true legal K. was first used in Parliament and I appeal to your own Conscience if it be not yet feared whether that be an Arbitrary distinction and to be * XXIX p. 17 20. rejected as having no solid Foundation in Reason and Nature I will maintain that it hath as much Foundation in Reason and Nature as that famous distinction in the Civil Law betwixt Malae fidei and Bonae fidei Possessor But if your Reasons about Providential Right be true then this distinction also must be Arbitrary as to Possession of Kingdoms because no Man in full Possession can be Malae fidei Possessor of a Crown To these Authorities let me add those of the generality of the Nobility Gentry and Clergy of the late Usurpations They used the same distinction of Powers which you call Arbitrary the same reasoning which you call uncertain and were of the same Opinion which you say contradicts the general Sense of Mankind Dr. Sanderson whose Authority will be venerable and much greater than yours * Praelect V. is for that unchangeable Allegiance to the Legal K. out of Possession which you most prophanely call Stupid and Slavish Allegiance and in his Censure of Ashcham as one of your learned Answerers hath observed charges your Opinion with the these immoral Consequences 1. That it evidently tends to the taking away of all Christian Fortitude and Suffering 2. To the encouraging of daring and ambitious Spirits to attempt continual Innovations with this confidence that if they can possess themselves of the Supream-Power they ought to be submitted to 3. To the obstructing unto the Oppressed Party all possible means without a Miracle of recovering his just Right of which he shall have been illegally and unjustly dispossessed And lastly to the bringing in of Atheism and the contempt of God and Religion The Bishop of St. Asaph was very sensible of this last Consequence since he took the Oath for he told the A. B. with great Gravity and Seriousness That he could not but admire the Providence of God that so many took the Oath and some among whom saith he there are great and considerable Men have refused to take it for we saith he to my Lord who have taken the Oath have preserved our Religion from Popery and you who stand out preserve it from Atheism and if they do Doctor as you also once thought then their Opinion cannot contradict the general Sense that Mankind have of Right and Wrong I am sure the old Caviliers had the very same Sense that these Men to their sorrow have now for they both called Charles II. King and thought him to be so tho' he was out of Possession and out of the Land too Nay they took Commissions from him as King of England and sought for him as their King and not to make him so as you Sophistically speak in your * p. 27. first Letter concerning the French Invasion Nay the Convention that call'd him home call'd him in as King not to make him so and dated their first Session in the Twelfth year of his Reign which according to your Principles and Reasonings was but the First Mr. Pryn was one of the Members of it and his Sense and Opinion was point blank against yours as you may find at large in his * p. 463. to 498. Plea for the Lords and his Concordia Discors and I cite him because it was his studied Opinion and the Practice of his latter years was according to it as appears also from a Paragraph or two in his Preface to Cotton's Abridgment which I here declare I produce against no Person nor no Authority but yours That all Parliaments and Ambitious Self-seekers in them who under pretence of a Publick Reformation Liberty the Peoples
enquiring after it for though it was printed yet whether at Xantippe's Instance or any other Cause of Fear you suppressed all the Coppies but two which happened to get abroad and one of those fell into my Hands After this on the 8th of April following you went to a learned Gentleman to persuade him not to be present at the Coronation and though their Majesties had been recognized by the Estates and were then in full Providential Possession yet you told him you had rather take the Oath twenty times than bear a part in it But about the beginning of May after you wrote a Discourse for taking the Oaths entituled The Lawfulness of taking the New Oath of Allegiance to King William and Queen Mary stated upon the strictest Principles of Church of England Loyalty and after you had finished it you sent it as I understand by a Letter from the West to Dr. Bu by which I understand Dr. Burnet but that Discourse plainly supposing the Government to be an Vsurpation and that Non-resistence was reserved as a Duty to King James from whom it could not be suspended it was not thought fit to be published This Book was seen and perused by many particularly two or three Clergymen at Tunbridge in August following said they had read it But to doe you Justice Doctor before this you did all you could to suppress it because it would not hold but it was now too late to attempt the suppression of it for Copies had got abroad into several Hands and I have one of them at your Ladies Service who I suppose was not against writing of it Upon Conviction this Paper would not hold then you grew very warm against the Oath for in the latter end of June or beginning of July you affirmed that the taking of it was not onely a recognizing but making the P. of Orange King as yet then Providence had not made him so adding that though you could actually forbear assisting King James yet you could not swear never to assist him that being not consistent with an Acknowledgment of his Right and that the more you thought of the Oath the worse you liked it and would have nothing to doe with it Remember this good Doctor and then consider if it doth not become a Man that said and did such things then to rant and swagger against some among our selves now It was now about this time that you were in the highth of your Fevour against the Government and the Oaths which discovered it self by many Symptomes upon several occasions When you first heard the News of a Fast which happened to be at your House in the Temple How a Fast said you I 'll warrant you we shall have dainty Prayers Prayers said Dr. Sharp that I am more affraid of than the Oaths And what Must we have Sermons too I 'll give them a Sermon that they shall not thank me for and accordingly you did so Your Text I remember was The Lord is a Man of War the Lord of Hosts is his Name and then you preached contrary point blank to what you have since printed and the drift of your Discourse was so plainly levelled against the Government and the Intention of the day that you gave great Offence to their Majesties good Subjects who filled the Town with Complaints against you but you valued not that but was pleased with it delighting to give some among us an account of what you had preached and how you had met with them About this time also you wrote a Discourse against taking the Oaths which you shewed to a Learned and Reverend Divine on the 29th of July I suppose it was your Letter to Dr. Williams whose Answer to it you despised as Stuff that did not deserve a Reply though one who saw it saith you stole your Argument from Jaddus and other things out of it which you have put in your Case of Allegiance In August out comes the first part of the History of Passive Obedience which you caressed into the World and were so taken with it that you went to a very learned Man who since became your Antagonist to pray him to write a Sheet of Conclusions not against some but against other men upon the Doctrines and Principles collected in it and that he might not mistake your design you left it in writing with him and he still hath the Original in the following Words The Doctrine of Nonresistance and Passive Obedience is founded on an irresible Authority consider then what are the Rights of an irresistible Authority and what the Duties of Passive Obedience 1. The Rights of Sovereign and irresistible Authority are that he cannot forfeit his Crown that he cannot be judged or deposed by his Subjects and Abdication and Desertion are but other names for this and therefore when once King he is always so till Death or voluntary or legal Resignation 2. Nonresistence does not onely signifie not to fight against the King but 1. That upon no pretence we must renounce his Right 2. We must never set his Crown upon another's Head 3. We must not transfer our Allegiance to another In this Month also dyed the Bp. of Chichester of everlasting Memory to whom as a Person of Honor can testifie you went about four or five days before he dyed to move him to make his Declaration About the same time you sent a Paper to Oxford against taking the Oath I have forgot the Title of it but I remember a passage in it to this purpose That as Usurpers seize upon the Lands and Houses and Fortifications of the King for their own use and turn them to their own Service against Law so against Law they seize upon the Laws themselves and use them against their first Intention to their own Service and the destruction of the King and his faithfull Subjects for whose defence they were made About the beginning of September you wrote an Apology for the Nonswearers which you designed for your Masterpiece and in December following a malitious Pamphlet coming out against the Bishops entituled A Letter out of the Countrey c. you began an Answer to it in defence of them but staying out too long where you wrote it Mrs. Satan and Sherlock took you to task and succeeded so well as to make you confess where you had been and about what and then it was no great Conquest to make you send for your Papers by six a Clock next morning and offer them as an Holocaust to atone her displeasure In all this time that you were so warm and zealous against the Oath you helped to disperse the few small Pamphlets that were printed against taking of it and expressed much trouble that others that were larger could not get abroad particularly you were very zealous for Printing The Case of Allegiance to a King in Possession which you then thought an admirable Piece and upon all occasions you were wont to express your Affection and Duty to King James and your
in the Decree runs in these Words Possession and Strength give a Right to Govern and Success in a Cause or Enterprize proclaims it to be lawful and just to justify it is to comply with the Will of God because it is to follow the Conduct of his Providence And then in the Margent over against it they cite Hobbs Owen Baxter and Jenkins and in the next Impression I hope they will put your Name in that glorious Company to shew the Sense of Mankind I ground my Confidence in this Appeal upon Discourses which I and others have had with several worthy Members of the Convocation who have been so free as to tell us that they could not be of your Opinion nay some of them have told me frankly that they abhorred your Principle and could never have taken the Oath upon it I believe you would be angry with them should I tell you their Names but I do not know why they may not contradict you as well as you have contradicted the Bishop of St. Asaph for contrary to his Sermon entituled God's ways of disposing Kingdoms which he preached before the Queen You in your Fast-Sermon preached not long after before her in June the last year and printed as his was by her Majesties Special Command tell us That God doth not always determine what is right and wrong by the Events of War for he is the Sovereign Judge of the World P. 25. and may often punish a wicked Nation by unjust Oppressors as he did the Israelites The good Lord be merciful to the poor Jacobites who are like never to be converted at this rate when one of you so apparently contradicts another and each part of the Contradiction hath Royal Authority on its side I do not say that you designedly contradicted the Bishop and I had almost said your self too for that Proposition seems to look very foul upon your Doctrine of Providence and almost needs an Explication and in good Truth Doctor the Sense of Mankind and the natural Notions are on the other side of the Controversy and if you do not carefully prevent them they will obtrude upon you and carry you to contradict your self as your Father Hobs did in his History of the Civil Wars who before he was aware of it run into the Arbitrary distinction betwixt Supream Strength and Right to govern For to the Question Who had the Supream Power when there was no Parliament P. 252. If by Power saith he you mean the Right to Govern no Body had it but if you mean the Supream Strength that was clearly in Cromwel who was obeyed as General of the Forces in England Scotland and Ireland Here Doctor I stopt a little to review the Authorities I have brought against you and I find that as a Man who has many Witnesses at a Tryal may forget to call some so I have forgot two Testimonies against you which I desire may be now heard speak The first is the Testimony of the Judges and Peers in Queen Mary's time and the second is that of the First Parliament of William and Mary c. p. 32 33. The former at the Tryal of the Duke of Northumberland made Answer to the Duke Querying by way of Plea Whether a Man acting by the Authority of the Great Seal and Order of the Privy Council could become thereby Guilty of Treason That the Great Seal of One that was not Lawful Queen could give no Authority nor Indemnity to those that acted on such a Warrant The latter in several of their Acts as in that for a Poll towards reducing Ireland 1 Gul. Mar 1 May 1689. and that for the Relief of their Majesties Protestant Subjects in Ireland 1 Gul. Mar. Jan. 27. 1689. declared the Irish then under King James ' Possession and actual Government to owe their Obedience to King William and for breach thereof to be Rebels though King James had been solemnly recognized by the Estates of the Realm But now Doctor after all these Testimonies against you perhaps you will reply that these are only Testimonies as to the Sense but not as to the Practise of Men whereas you have Asserted the Reasonings of some among our selves to be not only against the General Sense but the General Practice of Mankind in all Revolutions and that this is apparently on your side But if you or any for you object this against me I pray you to consider that the Practises of Men are to be tryed by Principles and not Principles by the General Practises of men for Mankind Doctor is a very corrupt Creature apt to act against the most acknowledged Principles of Truth and Falshood Good and Evil which God has engraven on all men's hearts as the Common Law or Common Sense or Common Notions of all mankind And as they will act against these Common Notions or the Law of Nature so will they act against the Law of Grace or the Notions of revealed Religion more especially they will act against both in times of Persecution when Ease Safety Honour and Preferment attend those who take part with Error against Truth and Wrong against Right and Danger Trouble Disgrace and poverty those who side with Truth against Errour and Right against Wrong In such hard Cases Doctor few will choose the Suffering side but the generality of men will act not only against the general Sense of mankind but against the inward Sence and Checks of their own Consciences as in the Idolatrous Reign of Ahab when Idolatry was the general practise of the Jews in the Arrian Reign of Valens when the Arrian Doctrine denying Jesus to be true God was the general profession and Arrian Worship the general practise of Christians Sir Simon Dew's Journal p. 23. in the Popish Reign of Queen Mary when all the Clergy of the Church of England but one hundred seventy seven turn'd Papists after Popery was throughly settled by Parliament and recognized by the Estates of the Realm and so became the Providential Religion of the Church so in the late French Persecution the generality of Protestants preferring Ease and Safety before a good Conscience turn'd Converts to Popery against their own Faith and Principles and as for those few which did not the Bp. of Meaux might have told them That they had nothing to support them but some uncertain Reasonings which contradict the general Practice of Mankind in all Revolutions of Religion You see Doctor what a poor Argument the general Practice of mankind is in Revolutions where the great majority will go with the Stream of Power and Preferment And therefore we are bid not to follow a multitude to doe Evil but to stick to Principles against Men's Practices and the Precepts of natural and revealed Religion against Men's Examples be they never so many and great For in truth Doctor few Men will doe their duty in any kind and therefore there are but few that will be saved especially in such an Age of latitude
Law gives to Sovereign Power he is King and King no sooner than he hath that Right I have now answered every thing in your Sermon relating to the Controversie concerning Kings and I here declare that I have onely defended the Principles and Reasonings of your Adversaries against you but if they be mistaken in Law and misapply them and this to the wrong Object let them answer themselves for their Mistake My design and business is only to rescue your Text and that in Rom. 13.1 and the Duties there commanded from the mere Providential to the Legal King but if those Men have so little Wit Law or Philosophy nay so little common Sense as of two Pretenders to the Crown at any time not to know which hath the legal Title their Mistake may prove fatal but I have nothing to doe with that I am sure Dr. you have done their Majesties much Disservice by awarding the legal Right from them and giving them instead of it an airy Title by Providence which Athaliah Absolom and Cromwel had and every prosperous Usurper can pretend to and I am confident had they been rightly informed of the nature of your Principle and of that loose and fickle and worthless Allegiance which Princes only get by it they would have had your Case of Allegiance censured as it deserves and instead of preferring you had punished you as the underminer of their Throne I am certain had you wrote and preached so in any of the former Protestant Raigns you would have been severely censured and punished by the Laws of Church and State and if as you tell us the Revolution hath made no Alteration in Government it is not yet too late to bring you to condign Punishment 15. I thought I should have made an end but finding some other Passages in your Sermon upon which the Reader may expect I should make some Reflections I cannot well pass them over First then I cannot but animadvert upon the great and undecent Liberty you take of speaking of the FRENCH KING in this and almost all your Sermons whereas in France that Antichristian Tyrant as you modestly call him will not suffer the greatest of his Clergy to bring so much as a railing Accusation against their Majesties or meddle with their Administration as you and the Bp. of St. Asaph and I know not how many more presume to do with his But who made you Judges over him He is God's Minister and God's annointed Servant and who art thou that judgest another Man's Servant To his own Master he standeth or falleth And what have you to doe to impeach him of Tyranny Persecution and Oppression Do you know the reasons of his Actions or can you tell what may be said to justifie or excuse the worst thing that he ever did You told Dr. Burrnet at Ely-house when he spoke reproachfully of King James that Crowned Heads ought not to be so treated but now Dr. you make no difficulty of treating the greatest of Crowned Heads at a much worse rate tho' he is God's ordinance on a double account both as a Legal and Providential King One would think to read in what a losty and insolent manner you speak of him that you were your self IMP. PON. MAX. or some great Prophet that had received Commission from Heaven to arraign Kings Certainly there is something very extraordinary in you something very divine or very diabolical that of late you have a Mouth given you speaking Blasphemies against Kings and against a King who has as many and great Vertues as any King in the World * f. s p. 10 11 12. Persecutor Oppressor Enslaver of Mens Bodies and Souls Tyrant and antichristian Tyrant This Dr. sounds like the Language of the Beast not of a Minister of the Church of England it runs in the Style of an Excommunication Bull and as you are as great as the Pope in your own Opinion so you have learnt to huff and hector Kings But what are you thus to take upon you You who but the other day were digging in Gravel-lane for Bread to what an height are you come from almost nothing and a Conventicle to defie Crowned Heads But we know from whence all this comes even from a most servile Spirit that cares not what it saith or doth so it humor the Times and please the People Of this no man hath been more guilty than you and I will give you and the World an instance of it Sometimes Liberty and Indulgence to Dissenters were in vogue and sometimes not and accordingly you watcht the Opportunities and wrote pro and con on it on both sides You were for it in your Preface to your Religious Assemblies and you were against it in your Answer to Whitby and your Reflexions upon the Plot but for it again in your Sermon before the Ld. Mayor a little before the Revolution and I doubt not but another Crisis would make you once more against it From this Time-serving and Self-seeking Principle it comes that the French K. is made the common place of Satyr in your and other such Clergy-mens Sermons He hath taken the part of K. James and that makes him so great a Tyrant but had he been against him and the Confederate Power for him then they had been the Tyrants and Oppressors and he that is now a Nero a Dioclesian had then been a most excellent Prince How many Declamations had Dr. Sherlock by this time made for him and against them if he had been our Allie and his victorious Legions employed in our Service Then we had heard again from the Pulpits the old Philippicks against Spain and the Inquisition the Pulpits would have rung then with Invectives against the Pope the Emperor and the Hungarian Persecutions and we should have been told again of Amboyna and all the Injuries and Insults of the Dutch But as the Case now stands nothing must be said against them the French K. is the only Antichrist and all the Tyrants in Europe a very Devil in humane shape Well Dr. you know many men have made Speeches in praise of the Plague and Famine and Tyrants and therefore for once let us defend a Paradox and try what may be said for Busiris or rather for the Hercules of France You tell us he invades the Liberties of Europe but I protest that is News to me for I never heard before that he made War with Europe Sweden Denmark Poland Switzerland Italy and Russia as I take it are all in Europe but I hear them not complain of him for usurping on their Liberties or pretend to have any Reprisals to make upon him Besides Dr. I am not able to understand what are the Liberties of Europe and desire to know where they are or in what Code or Charter one may find them If Europe have any Liberties it must be a Community but I never read of the Community of Europe tho' I have of that of Asia which was a Community of 13 Cities in