follow every Civil Judgment much less the Vncivil Judgment of any Sett of Conspirators and Traitors into whose hand you so liberally and piously dispose it T. B's 2d Lett. p. 19. Eucher I am resolved that no calumnious usage shall storm or transport me into any indecent or uncharitable passion But tho' for my own part I might reject your imputations of disloyalty with scorn and silence yet for your conviction I will calmly remind you that I ever told you that the Estates of this Land are not Judges of the Kings Person who is not under their Power nor in Law subject to them And all that I any where said of their Judgment about the Throne amounts to no more than this that in a state of Anarchy on a King's Desertion or in Arbitration between two or more Competitors the Estates of this Land are the Supream Domestick Judges and Arbiters upon the Tenure of the Sovereignty and the Rights of the Nation in order to Settlement And that in case an irresistible or unresisted Potentate * Sol. Ab. p. 5. enforce himself upon the Nation for a new King and the Subject people cannot help it our Laws in this concur with the Laws and Practice of all Nations in allowing our Estates to determine for us in such Exigencies * Ibid. p. 4. that in extra-ordinary interruptions and convulsions of State our Laws and Constitutions allow the Estates such a King as can actually be had for the time being for which * Ibid. p. 5. I refer to our Histories Acts of Parliament and Judgments of Law under hereditary Kings since the Reformation without any Remonstrance of King Church or State to the contrary and at last to Bishop Overals Convocation Book So that if a Question arise in the disordered Kingdom who is my King to whom my Allegiance is legally payable I refer to their Judgment as the then Supream in all our Civils and if you can assign any Superior or more Legal Judgment to decide and determine such national Questions and Controversies I am content to give up fairly to you And if you can produce any Homilies Articles Canons or Monuments of this Church contrary to these my Positions then I will yield that the Churches Authority as far as that can go upon Civil Questions will lie against me But a mans Eyes shall sooner drop out of his Head than discover any such counter-principles in the publick constitutions of our Church which you would have quoted if you could particularly but since that could not be done 't was very feeble to make such an hollow and causeless noise about it And yet if the Church in Civils had interpreted the Laws contrary to the Judgments of the State she had given a null and incompetent Judgment since we are no Authentick Doctors in these matters nor the Church a Court of Civil Judicature prohibitions always justly lying on her whensoever she admits the Pleas and assumes the Judgment of Civil Causes As to the Rebellion against King Charles the First it comes not near our Case for there was a King actually Regnant who in Parliament had redressed all their Grievances and whose Tenure was indisputable and undisputed the very Rebels owning their Arms to be for King and Parliament But neither was that Rebellion a judicial form of proceeding of both Houses of which only I spake as Authentick in the Actual Vacancy of the Throne and a state of Anarchy but a military one by a divided part of the Houses assuming the Style and Title of the whole Parliament against a King actually Regnant which I had no occasion to mention much less to justifie the Nation having since condemned it by Act of Parliament Nor had it been entred into by the unanimous Vote of both Houses had it obliged as a Law as wanting the Royal Assent of the King then Regnant And the Rights of the Crown and Duties of our Allegiance are still the same tho' Milton will still have Successors to his Villanies arise when their Sovereigns are involved to tamper with popular and seditious humours and ambitions in order to new projected commotions But they who make the Convention to have proceeded on principles of Rebellion contrary to their enacted Judgments that hence they may draw Arguments to whiten the Old and to enflame New Rebellions deserve they and their incendiary Pamphlets to be burnt together Nor need you fear any such consequence from any my Positions as if upon these the Parliaments may change their Kings every Day and thereupon our Oaths For I have asserted no Convention of Estates to be in Name or Thing a Parliament if they mect contrary to the Fundamental Laws of their Constitution And while a King is actually Regnant they * The Triennial Act was not pasied when this was written yet meet sit are prorogued and dissolved at the Kings Order only And this being yet the form of our State no Votes or Bills of the Houses can pass into an Act or Law without the Assent of the King Regnant at whose pleasure they immediately are and are not and so can make no Legal Assembly or publick Change without or against him over whose Person they are neither Lords nor Judges For tho' Causes of the King may come before the Lords and be overruled in Justice to the Subjects Right against which they are brought thither yet this is no more than what we see in other Courts which yet pretend no Sovereignty over the Kings Person by whose Commission they sit in Judgment So far am I from such wicked Principles as Plat-thorns in the Crowns of Kings and set them in the most unsupportable Bondage that Art or Ill-nature can contrive but withal provoke great spirited and designing Princes to seek avenues to an Arbitrary Power who would have gladly been contented with a regular and equal Sovereignty if they could have been secured in it from the fears and incentives of popular insolence But to return from this Digression if a King thro' any fear or cause whatsoever utterly deserts his Kingdoms and leaves all in Anarchy and Confusion that the Estates of the Land if they can should then Convene and settle the Nation the best way they can is so far from Rebellion that it is most certainly both their Priviledge and their Duty And if they are first to determin our Settlement I am sure the Churches Loyalty is to follow their Judgment except we challenge an Appeal from them to the Church to ratifie or vacate our Civil Constitutions And if you call this Duty of Submission to their Civil Settlements implicit Faith in the Parliament it will be prone to retort that you challenge an implicit Faith in the Church and that in matters not Ecclesiastical in a latitude more Exorbitant than any Pretensions of the Church of Rome But the Truth is our Duty to any such established Settlements is not founded in an implicit Faith whose proper Objects are things not seen
a perpetual Servitude by Oath or other forms of engagement which they under such Exigences may lawfully yield to And proportionably the Estates of any Nation may be thus pressed by an irresistible Prince and thereupon lawfully submit to that injurious Demand of such Prince Nay if any Prince and the fiduciary Council of any Nation concert to oppress the Subject People by an unjust demand of Submission they being not only in Fact but Legal Constition uncapable to resist may for the same reason contract Submission or Legal Allegiance when their former Lord hath left them without order to shift for themselves and acts not within his Sphere as heretofore For herein you do not injure him but save your self which he has no right in such cases to deny you And this at least is the Case of all those who have taken the Oath of New Allegiance without doing any thing else in the Revolution tho' the Prince and our Convention had really done King James and us wrong For we could neither in Right nor Fact oppose it for our Representatives and the Lords having determined upon the Nation we were inhabil to censure their Judgement and consequently to oppose or subvert what we had no Authority to condemn Dyscher Much such another instance is * Sol. Ab. p. 6 7. your Lord of a Mannor Let him look how he came to be so I may treat with him as Lord of the Mannor whom the Law declares to be so But if the Lords Tenants conspire against their lawful Landlord and dispossess him of his Mannor and invite a Stranger and say and swear he shall be Lord of the Mannor and accordingly pay Homage and Fealty to him Sir you may determine for their swearing and lying too if you please but I shall have nothing the better opinion of your honesty for it T. B's 2d Lett. p. 24. Eucher I observe two grand defects in this Reply One that 't is not supposably legal that all the Tenants in the Mannor can by Legal Forms of Judgment dispossess a Lawful and possess a wrong Person into the Lordship of a Mannor because these Tenants are not Judges in Law And any other violent and illegal Forms of Expulsion and Admission quadrate not with our Case But Secondly 'T is a very silly supposition and never any where exemplified in Fact that all the Tenants under a state of National Government should violently out a true and put in a wrong Landlord vi armis and swear and pay the wrong Possessor all the Duties of the Homage accustomed when the Lord that is in by Law will bring the strength of the Country to reduce them And Thirdly You cannot duly apply this to our present Case of Allegiance For all King James's Subjects did not concur to out him either violently or judicially nor consequently to bring in the Stranger which is the form in which you state the Case of Rebellious Tenants Otherwise however my parallel holds good that if a great many of the Tenants conspire with a Stranger and bribe the Judges to a corrupt Judgment against the old true Landlord who being thereby ejected the Stranger comes in by forms of Law I say still the rest innocent Tenants tho' conscious of the Wrong may swear Homage and Fealty to the New de facto Landlord And so here put the Case as you would have it at the worst that never so great a part of King James's Subjects had with the Prince of Orange actually conspired against him and made him fly and thereupon a National Court assembling to sit upon the Tenure of his Estate had been corrupted to give wrong Judgment against him for the Prince yet the form of Process being legal the innocent Subjects may or must take him for their Royal Landlord that is in by Forms of Law and swear him the customary Homage and Fealty But for the justice of that Judgment I have fully advocated already and so in this place shall have no need to make repetition Dyscher But let the Fifth Commandment look to it self for it was never so hardly beset You say * Sol. Ab. p. 7. That from the Fifth Commandment we cannot charge King William with subjection to King James c. But does a Nephew or a Son in Law owe no Duty if he owe not that which is properly called Subjection Or may a Man because he is not his Subject spoil another of all he has And must all persons applaud and approve the Act and swear he is in the Right T. B's 2d Lett. p. 25. Eucher Since I must bear the penance of answering your loose and impertinent Questions so often inculcated know you then that as to the point of Duty a Nephew owes an Uncle and a Son in Law owes his Father in Law Reverence on the account of those Relations if the Superior Relation loses not his Title to that Reverence by ill usage For if an Uncle shall misuse a Nephew or a Father in Law the Son in Law without Cause and will not fairly adjust or refer their differences upon demand the Nephew and Son in Law owe no respect at all for that such Uncle and Father in Law is worse than a stranger and a most unnatural Enemy And therefore the Nephew and Son in Law having not derived their Being Maintenance nor Education from the Uncle and Father in Law and being under no present dependence on them are free to vindicate their Gauses against such Uncle and Father in Law by those ways of defence that they are legally capable of either by Law Arbitration or War As for injustice you know I am no Advocate for it and therefore your Interrogation hereupon with your Reflection upon his Majesty is as invidious toward me as injurious towards his Majesty as I have before abundantly shewed Dyscher The Case of an own Daughter is still more severe but for that you say * Sol. Ab. p. 7. she is in Duty bound to follow her Husbands Fortune Order and Authority even against the Will of her Father and that with a more plenary consent if she judges her Husbands Cause to be just in it self But Sir I am not satisfied with your bare word that a Woman is thus bound to follow her Husband thro' thick and thin let her have a care how she becomes partner in his sins But doth the Duty of a Wife take away the Relation of a Child They may indeed limit each other so that the Father may not command the Daughter any thing inconsistent with the Duty of a Wife nor the Husband the Wife any thing inconsistent with the Duty of a Child to a Parent But yet the great end of these Relations is to strengthen and support and not to destroy each other Besides your Reason is a mistake in it self as to this Case for could you with all your tricks of Legerdemain remove both King James and the Prince of Wales out of the way then there
King had prejudged against all the Argument for Abdication and had been a virtual Sentence that he had not abdicated And they could not well have resumed that debate without rejecting his Letters after reading and censuring their own admission of them which would more justly have exposed their Wisdom and offended you than the measures which they observed But after judgment past for the Abdication they could not admit his Letters under the Royal Style because they had judged that he was not our then King and so the Admission of his Letters as their Kings had been a virtual Reverse of that their Judgment in the same Session and Breath by which they had rendred themselves if not altogether incompetent yet very injudicious Judges And if after Judgment against his then Sovereignty they had sent to him under the style and salutation of late King and have made him King a-new had it not been a wise Transaction much to their Credit Thanks and the Nations Interest So much then for the Conspiracy Next for the Authority which you say was none since no National Subjects of a Sovereign Monarch can be his Judges And by Mr. Johnson's leave I will say so too and did say so * Sol. Ab. p. 4. most expresly tho' you in great sincerity take no notice of it because it it seems it was not considerable enough But is it not a very considerable Assertion That when a King is fled from his Throne into foreign Dominions and doth not exert any Royal Power or presence to his People the Estates of this Land are the Supreme Domestick Judges upon the Tenure of the Sovereignty which is not to make them Judges of the Kings Person but in the want of his Person of the State of the Kingdom and the Rights of the Nation in Order to Settlement And can you either disprove this saying or charge it or me with Regicide Principles Clamat Melicerta periisse frontem de rebus may well deserve your remembrance here especially since I told you * Ibid. p. 9. that King James was never in Law subject to them or under their Power But as to the Authority of the Estates to convene when there is no King actually regnant you may learn if you please that tho' the Estates were created by Kings yet their Rights and Charters are perpetual and constituted for a fundamental Council to the Land under the King while we have one governing but when we have none authoritative of themselves to resettle the Nation the best manner they in their judgment may or can And this right they have in common with all the like Orders of Estates in all other Kingdoms otherwise the Nation would not have been so earnest for a Free Parliament when that liberty was opened to them by General Monks Conduct Dyscher I shall talk with you about that Parliament by and by And when I have told you That your second Parliament hath no more Authority than your Hocus Pocus transubstantiating Convention that riotous Assembly all whose Acts were contrary to Law and censurable by Law and so cannot confirm them I will examin your grave Position That when a King is fled from his Throne into foreign Dominions or doth not exert any Royal Power or Presence to his People the Estates of this Land are the Supream Domestick Judges upon the Tenure of the Sovereignty But am I bound to follow their Judgment against manifest Right and my known Duty T. B's 2d Lett. Eucher No no by no means but in such a Crisis you have no other known Duty toward any Settlement but to abide by that which they establish in the Land for the time being for that all Rights and Duties then debatable are in such junctures determinable by them to all Civil Effects and Obligations and therefore their Judgments ought not to be opposed by any slanders or factions whatsoever even tho' King James from abroad condemns them Por a Foreign Censure is no Civil Judgement and by consequence of no legal validity or virtue Kings sometimes suffer wrong but whensoever by these sufferings they are removed from their People the Estates must provide for the Nation as they can and as they do we must be content nor has the suffering King any Right to engage us from abroad to the contrary And this Authority even without a King is so full in it self that it needs no Ratification on the post-fact to make its Acts obliging or effectual tho' such a declarative sort of Ratification as our second Parliament made be of use to satisfie unsetled minds and second a former Obligation which was what I had respect to when I said We are the more to submit to the proceedings of the Convention and first Parliament since the Kingdom hath ratified their proceedings in a second viz. by a Declarative Recognition and reinforcement of their legality and virtue Dyscher After all your considerable Assertions are but a malicious insinuation against your suffering King as if he ran away thro' wantonness and would have nothing to do with us T. B's 2d Lett. p. 17. And herein Mr. Johnson seems more sincere in his wickedness than your Dawbers For he tells your Parliament that there was no Desertion * Pres to the Commons before his Argument p. 16. For King James must needs go and leaves us to understand the rest of the Proverb by an Aposiopesis that he was Devil driven And so far speaks plain as to say That he was as much driven from England as Nebuchadnezzar was driven to Grass and he claimed as he fled by the Rochester Letter And he further shews * Ibid. p. 19. That no advantage could be taken of a Kings withdrawing himself from the Government if it had been voluntary as all the World knows it was not without a Summons sent after him to return again in forty days And therefore he roundly professes that the people abrogated their King after his Expulsion And whence is it then that he exerts not his power You know he exerts all the power he can that he doth not more is not his fault but yours you may have both his Power and Presence among you too if you please But will you contrary to your Duty and Oaths keep him out by force of Arms and then plead your own wickedness in your Defence T. B's 2d Lett. p. 17. Eucher Mr. Johnson falsly owns the fact you charge upon the Nation for the sake of his Principle which his spite to all Kings and Kingly Power has cast him into viz. That the People may Depose their Kings as often as they judge them Peccant which is almost as often as they please But 't is notorious that the Estates judged the Throne made Vacant not by their Act of Abrogation but the Kings own Abdication which if so all the world knows it must be in some degree Voluntary Now here will I challenge Mr. Johnson to say out Does that claim of the then
Subjects of any Sovereign Prince may combine with and invite in a foreign Prince and when he comes tho' with a contemptible force they may forsake their lawful Prince and then by their Treachery having left him helpless and hopeless may treat with a Foreigner drive away their own King give his Crown to the Foreigner and maintain it with their Swords and Purses without which he could not keep his illgotten Goods T. B's 2d Lett. p. 18. Eucher It confessedly seems as I stated the Proposition you cannot deny the perspicuity of its Truth and therefore you invert it to an invidious Paraphrase which in many parts of it is not truly applicable to that which was the Subject of my Apology viz. the Authority of the Convention For all your aggravated Invitations Combinations Revolts Treacheries and Derelictions allowing or supposing them to be no other than you describe them are not chargeable on the whole Estates of the Land especially when in Convention And even thus I will renew my Position That by the Laws of Nations if a foreign Prince procure the Revolt of a vast part of another Princes Subjects thro' the terror of which the helpless Prince leaves his Kingdoms in Anarchy under the Army of the foreign Potentate who thereupon calls the Estates of such deserted Nation to treat for a Settlement they may convene and treat with him upon such invitation For it is the necessity the subject Nation stands in for a Settlement that warrants and legitimates such Treaties by what means soever those exigencies are introduced whether by foreign Force or intestine Commotions jointly or severally throwing all into Anarchy and Disorder But if the charge of the Revolt preclude the legality of any mans Session that incapacity ought to have been objected and if over-ruled protested against in Convention as I have already told you which not being done they were all in Law Reason and Civil Construction lawful Agents and Councellors As to the word Unresisted Power I confess I used care indeed but no trick for it was too hard for me to judge whether the Prince's Power were irresistible or no and so it is in many cases in which Parties yield rather than run the hazard of a Battle But every one can tell when it is or is not actually resisted and the Proposition is as true of an unresisted as well as irresistible Power Tho' take you all the Forces foreign and domestick joyned to the Prince when the Convention was called you will think it hard for any Subjects to have resisted them when the King himself long before durst not but disbanded and quitted thereby all pretensible Duties in the Subjects to take Arms. And the Conventioners deserve to be your humble Servants for putting them upon such an Essay But if you will require where the fault of this non-resistance really lies I think you may find it in him that neither could be induced to call a Parliament nor to fight it out After which double miscarriage and flight out of the Kingdom I think no man was obliged to resist or take up Arms but to desire such a Settlement as the State of Affairs would admit As for the Wars we maintain with our Purses against all the Enemies of our present Settlement they are just according to all the Rules and Forms of Civil Laws to which you your selves contribute as well as we only with more Crime as doing that against your Consciences which we admit upon Principles to us appearing good But if you think your Exigencies legitimate your payment of Taxes to prevent new danger so we think the general Exigencies of the Nation did legitimate this Settlement and do still justifie our plenary Submission thereunto according to the Sense Laws and Usages of all Nations As for those you call Revolters they were not the Subject of my Discourse whom I therefore leave to God who as he saw the provocations so did he also every mans purposes and trains of thought in that Insurrection according to which at the last day they shall each man be judged But for those that lay still I know no legal summons they had from King James to rise in Arms to make that quietness a breach of Allegiance in which certainly you Jacobites are as culpable as the others and in one degree more in that when you might and upon your Principles ought to have taken Arms for him you would not and now when you neither can nor ought clamour for new Seditions and Commotions by which we must inevitably fall a prey to France and a Burnt-Sacrifice to Rome Dyscher I will now for the present intermit the Remarks I collected at Gilman's Coffee-House and bestow some other impartial Reflexions on your Grand State-Principle on which you raise your other Arguments Here then I must tell you That you set up new Principles which the Church of England hath always declared to be erroncous and grounds of Rebellion viz. you set up the Parliament above the King and that we must take our measures of obedience only from the Parliament * Sol. Ab. p. 31. to whose Judgment say you in all Civils all Subjects must submit And upon this you Ground all your Superstructure as that King James's * Ibid. p. 8. Tenure has been publickly judged by this Natition to be extinct * p. 9. and that this Nation hath justified King William 's Cause which is to conclude upon us Beyond this you allow no no man to look or enquire The whole Body of the Church are to be taught by the Parliament and to have an implicit faith in them against the King in all Cases whatsoever so that * Ibid. p. 4. the Churches Loyalty is to follow the Civil Judgment concerning the Object of our Allegiance and the Tenure of Sovereignty And by this Rule if a Parliament change a King every day the Church is bound to swear to every one the Parliament can solve their Oaths But there was a time when the Church thought it their Duty to be Teachers and particularly as to Loyalty as being a principal part of Religion and even against a Parliament Here unfortunately four or five lines were broken off the MS. Reflections but as I well remember the sense was such as is included within these brackers and their Doctrine was owned by all true Sons of the Church of England I mean the Old Church of England in the Reign of King Charles II. This was their Doctrine and Practice and generally of the whole Church of England ever since the Reformation as is plain in her Homilies Articles and Canons c. And you do not attempt to disprove these but only assert the contrary and so leave it as a thing settled and sure MS. Reflections That the Churches Loyalty as to the Object is to be guided by the true Constitution of the State I deny not but I shall never yield what you would thence slur upon us that it is to
to suffer this only till the ordinary Rule can be fairly recovered If this be so why is it not recovered Sure you will not plead that in justification of a People which is notoriously their Fault and such a Fault as is in their Power to mend when they please Let them unanimosly as they ought return to their Duty and Loyalty and the thing will do it self and without any great pains trouble or danger T. B's 2d Lett. p. 19 20. Eucher But I thought I had long before strangled the life and force of this Objection having abundantly proved our Submission to this National Settlement faultless And so a breach of National Contract is no fair way to a recovery for an opportunity only of doing a thing legally can put us into a fair capacity of recovering the ordinary Course which is not as you â—ancy the business of a moment but an expectation of years and proper Conjunctures at the hands of God whose leisure we are to wait for without our own too violent anticipations Thus the Nation behaved it self thro-out all the Reigns of Henry IV V. and VI. whom you would have challenged for Rebels in lingring too long in the restitution of the Right Line But whereas you propose to us an universal unanimity in reversing this Constitution I will dare undertake the Affair for you sub poena Capitis when you can find me out an effectual Expedient of making us all unanimous Otherwise what shall the unanimous do that are the far less numbers unarmed and in no publick Capacity of acting for the Kingdom against those settled and formed Powers that can easily squeeze all our little unanimities to pieces Shall there be no end of strife No yielding to legal forms of Determination And when there is but little hope or â—wisting the Sand-rope can your thing do it self and that with little trouble pains or danger And yet if King James Abdicated by a real Cession as the Nation judged and I have proved your project would violate not only this extraordinary Settlement but your ordinary Rule also by which in the moment of Cession it devolves on the next Heir Lineal and the Course cannot turn retrograde without the Consent of all the Heirs in being or their proper Curators for them Dyscher But I see you relapse again and become a zealous Advocate for your extraordinary Kings in whose behalf you plead Acts of Parliament made by Extra-lineal Kings which were confirmed submitted to you subtily phrase it by the Lineal Heirs and these were approved by Lawyers nor did the Church ever remonstrate against them And what of all this Let the Vsurpations and Confusions be what they will still men will eat and drink buy and sell and such like Acts. Nor do I think such a State doth acquit men from the Obligation to do what in them lies such things as seem absolutely necessary for the preservation of the Society and the real good of Mankind And if any such things as are necessary for the maintenance of human Affairs and which are accompanied with common Justice in themselves should now be done or enacred and hereafter be confirmed by King James I know no reason to remonstrate against this but I think the need of such a confirmation is a demonstration where the Right and Authority lies T. B's 2d Lett. p. 20. Eucher Since I am bound to follow the way you lead me the first thing I am to observe is your mistake or perâ—â—â—â—ion of my words about the submission of Heirs Lineal by which you say I subtilly mean their confirmation of the Statutes of Extra-lineal Kings which is no part or glance of my meaning and no man carefully heeding the Order of my words could think it to be so For I mention their submission to somewhat mentioned before those Statutes And I truly meant the long and frequent submissions of the Heirs Lineal as Subjects â—o Kings Extra-lineal actually Regnant particularly under the Lancastrian Reigns And even your Edward the IVth Father Duke of York swore Allegiance to King Henry the VIth and kept it till new â—â—aâ—ses of Rupture arose between them So that it is a very impertinent importunity to clamâ—â—r aâ—or◠〈◊〉 subsequent confirmations which I â—ever â—â—â—tioned And instead of subtil it had beer too silly in me to have called a Confirmation of an invalid Act a submission to that feeble thing which is thereby enlivened And yet by your leave all After-confirmations do not suppose always an antecedent Nullity in the Act confirmed for they sometimes secure sometimes continue and sometimes double an antecedent validity which all the Statutes under Extralineals had in themselves for the time being before there could be room for those subsequent Ratifications and the perpetuity of their Virtue stands not in those Ratifications but in the Non-repeal of them And yet however had it been otherwise by parity of Reason all our Acts obliged the Subject now during this present Reign and we are thereby acquitted in our present submission whatsoever nullities it may fall under in your next Revolution But there is a Famous Act viz. the 11th of Henry the VIIth Chap. 1. made in an Extra-lineal Reign that declares it for Law and Equity that Subjects pay their Allegiance to the King for the time being and indemnifies them herein against after punishments This Law was never since confirmed censured or repealed by any succeeding Prince or Parliament and yet stands firm in the Body of our Statutes to all Civil Effects and Judgments which pass ever since according to the importance and tenour thereof And you your self grant me enough for the time being that the Estates may sit in Parliament under Extra-lineal Kings to do and enact things necessary for the preservation of the Society and the real good of Mankind and are not acquitted from an obligation to do so thro' the disorder in the Succession and such Acts in this Reign when hereafter confirmed by King James you will not condemn Sir your humble Servant But can you tell how such Acts could or can pass in such Parliaments without an Oath of Allegiance taken to such Extra-lineal Kings by all the Members I doubt this will put you out of your good humour again and that is a great pity because you are so seldom in it But however these honest Acts must be valid for the time being upon us till King James returns or else the Obligation of the present State to preserve the Society or promote the real Good of Mankind by them will be but of little Virtue or Use Dyscher But pray Sir upon such extraordinary interruptions did all men ever think themselves bound to approve them Did not they still as opportunity served assist Right Did not such proceedings cost a world of Blood and Treasure to none or very ill purpose while no Peace or Ease could be had till things were brought to rights again When matters are in trouble or confusion wise and good Men
have said for while there is one in being and claiming to whom the Right really belongs what can your extra-ordinary Successors be but Tyrants and Vsurpers T. B's 2d Lett. p. 20 21. Eucher This I confess is an amazing Circumvention if my Memory hath in truth beguiled me And 't is a challenge enough to shock a greater confidence than mine To prove this therefore we must recur to the Form Enacted by the Statute Anno Tertio Jacobi Regis c. Also I do swear from my heart that notwithstanding any Sentence of Excommunication or Deprivation made or granted or to be made or granted by the Pope or his Successors or by any Authority derived or pretended to be derived from him or his See against the said King his Heirs or Successors or any absolution of the said Subjects from their obedience I will bear Faith and true Allegiance to his Majesty his Heirs and Successors and him and them will defend to the utmost of my Power against all attempts whatsoever that shall be made against his or their Persons their Crown and Dignity by Reason and Colour of any such Sentence or Declaration or otherwise and will do my best endeavour to disclose and make known unto his Majesty his Heirs and Successors all Treasons and Traiterous Conspiracies which I shall know or hear of to be against him or any of them These are all the times the words Heirs and Successors are mentioned in the Oath and in these here is no Character of Lawful set at all So that here you fall under the same fault you charge upon me of not reading the Oath and another added in a bold interpolation thereof at all adventure or if you have read it 't is the greatest of all prevarications consciously to misrender it but whether it were the one or the other it is the most frontless and unparallel'd impudence to down-face an obvious Truth with notorious Falshood And yet have a little patience to see what you had gained by this remark if it had been true You had said * Sol. Ab. p. 3. That the Oath of Allegiance binds to the King his Heirs and Lawful Successors and I taking it for granted that you interjected the word lawful not as a part but an interpretation of the Oath denied it not but without any cavil candidly admitted it but because I formed an Inference from that Oath that you like not you interpolate the Text of the Oath by foisting in the word lawful that hence you might draw a pretence that Lawful Successors limitedly denote the Lineal Heirs But neither would this have held For had the word lawful been found in the Oath my Argument had still been good * Sol. Ab. p. 5. That in the late Oath of Allegiance after the words Heirs the words Lawful Successors were added on this very self same ground that tho' Heirs by the ordinary Course are the Legal Successors yet others legally may succeed in Cases extraordinary Nay this legality of such extra-lineals had been more fully acknowledged had the word Lawful been inserted than now it is For now if a man would be perverse and were there no other Reason upon other Bottoms he might argue that this Oath simply setting all Successors without any express Qualification of Lawful to exclude unlawful requires Allegiance to all Actual Successors indiscriminately without any reserved respect to any legality or illegality But whether we suppose the Quality of Lawful as intended by the Sense or no the addition of Successors after Heirs denotes that their may be Successors to whom our Allegiance is by Oath secured that are not Heirs in the strict sense of Lineal Descent or else after Heirs no word of that Importance ought to have been added But as I was at first candid in the Concession of the Legality so will I here give you the reason of that Candor Having then observed that all Duties respect Laws and that what is not Legal can have no Legal Obligation and withal that the Oath obliges to the Successors of the very same Legal Sovereignty established here it appeared to me that he that comes into any other form of Sovereignty over us hath no right to our Allegiance by virtue of that Oath or the old standing Laws whatsoever Title thereto he may acquire by virtue of New Laws and Constitutions But if he assumes a Sovereignty that is in no wise Legal 't is Tyranny in Form and Nature and while it is barely such the man is an Enemy and no Allegiance can be due to him Now the Legal Forms by which Extra lineal Kings are invested with the English Sovereignty stand in Admission and Recognition of our Estates when insuparable Exigencies or just Causes incapacitate the Heirs Lineal to reign over us or us to be reigned over by them of which Obstacles in a state of Anarchy the Estates are our Supreamest and Final Judges Dyscher But what have you to say to an Impartial Reflection which I shall here offer you from another hand viz. that you maintain * See Sol. Ab. p. 6. That by our Oath to King James we are bound to pay Allegiance to King William which seems so strange a Paradox that the defending of it must serve only to let the World see that there are no Words nor Oaths possible to be framed for which men may not find Distinctions and Salvo's to turn them which way they think fit even directly opposite to what they were at first intended MS. Reflect Eucher Truly Brother this looks rather like whining under an Argument than an Answer to it for men seldom make a moan under any Objection they can solve Yet is your Reflecters Complaint herein as little sincere as manly For I said not that our Oath to King James alone obliges our Allegiance to King William as you from him represent me but that * Sol. Ab. p. 4. to p. 6. putting all together that I had said my concluding Opinion was that our Old oath of Allegiance supposing it still in force to the King his Heirs and Successors binds us to pay Allegiance to King William and Queen Mary as the present actual recognized Successors to King James upon extinction though not of his Life yet of his Sovereignty And this you can never disprove except you either shew that in that Oath the word Successors so distinctly set after Heirs three times in the same Paragraph was purposely set to exclude all Extra-lineal Kings for the time being whereby all the Statutes and former ties of Allegiance actually owned under the past Extra-lineals will be repealed by this Enacted Oath and all Judgments ever since past accordingly vacated or else that King William and Queen Mary are not actual Successors to King James in this Sovereignty by the same or as legal forms of Constitutions as other Extra-lineals were before them by a National Admission and Recognition tho' somewhat more than Extralineal Forms may be challenged to
the Quarrel of which mens private Opinions are most times very contrary but can hardly ever be sure or unanimous And by this Rule all Nations go and there is no better tho' God forbid that any man should be obliged to think all the Spoils of War and Law to be really honest and morally rightful Now according to these Rules and Distinctions I asserted that Extra-lineal Kings may be Lawful Successors in Cases Extra-ordinary and I will add upon Causes really Just Rightful Successors too And lest you should quarrel at this Distinction as of private Invention but no publick Character I refer you to the late Oath of Allegiance in the first Paragraph where our late Sovereign Lord K. J. is declared Lawful and Rightful King of this Realm c. that he might be taken for not only de facto but de jure King But amidst all this Dust of what use is a General Question or Position except it properly affects our particular Cases So that in order to the Censure you design upon King William you ought to have charged all the Facts in your stated Question directly upon him in the Course of the Revolution with exact congruity and accuracy that you might have evinced his Illegality or Incapacity of Right in the Possession of this Crown But this you perhaps fancy every body can do But I will in truth try whether it can be done or no. I allow you then in the foundation that the Prince of Orange at his Descent as he had no Right so he pretended none to this Crown and declared his Intentions not to injure King James in any his Personal or Royal Rights whatsoever but then I deny that the Prince seized the Crown by ill Arts or any breach of publick Protestations For when he came in the Head of an armed Force he declared that he came not for the Crown but a Decision of his Cause in Parliament to which end he sent the King fair Articles of Truce and Treaty during the Session But the King refuses or neglects the Proposals and leaves the Kingdom in Anarchy Now all such Declarations in War have this natural obvious and perpetual intention that if the matters in Controversie be adjusted as demanded the Prince demandant will be fully satisfied as having no design to seize his Adversaries Dominions if he will right the Causes of Hostility in the manner claimed but otherwise the very form and Face of War and Arms is in Fact an open Declaration to vanquish out dethrone and crush the Adversary by all Martial and Hostile Methods whatsoever So that King James nglecting his Demands in not calling a Parliament to satisfie the Prince cannot complain that he has broken his Faith or Declaration in taking his Crown And further when the King was gone there appeared no Force or Fraud in the Prince's Actions with the Convention to whose Judgment he fairly left the whole Cause and State of Affairs and they having maturely and peaceably debated all things judge King James's Desertion with respect to all antecedent passages to be an Abdication of the Government and withal they judge the Prince's Succours to have merited the Crown which with the amicable Concession of the two next Heirs they cheerfully offer up to him which he then accepted when a fair Capacity and title was thus legally opened to him So that tho' at first he had no form of Title Pretentions or Designs for this Crown during King James his Right yet when this determined and no other Legal Obstacles interposed there was a fair Reason to accept that then which it was not lawful in Conscience for him before to covet or design Dyscher Your instance in the Houses of York and Lancaster comes not up to so plain a Case as this Where things are obscure and dark as that Title was and perhaps still is to most men great allowance is to be made Lancaster had the more obvious York the better Title * Here T. B. very charitably makes the excellent Bishop of Worcâ—ster to deserve a Gallows instead of a Bishoprick p. 22. But what means this preaching up Confusion The Nation then weltered in Blood and Gore till an undoubted Title put an End to that quarrel But you would have us obstinately maintain a bad Title that our Miseries might have no End A rare Example of Justice and Love to your Country T. B's 2d Lett. p. 21 22. Eucher It seems then it was lawful for the Nation to admit the House of Lancaster against the better Title in the House of York or else what allowances do you make upon the Obscurities of the Title But does it follow that the House of Lancaster had a real Right If so then an extra-lineal King may be Rightful If not then Allegiance may be lawfully yielded by the Nation to extra-lineals who are in by legal Forms of Settlement and Recognition tho not really Rightful or Lineal Heirs For so upon your great allowances the House of Lancaster when enthroned was visibly Legal tho not lineally Rightful and does not this then come full up to all the purpose I designed For it was not meer obscurity of the Descent tho' much involved before the common World by contrary Pretensions that warranted the People in these Submissions but the necessity of ending Spoils Rapines and effusions of Blood For if the competitor Houses would have acquiesced in the judgment of the Estates they could well have determined for the better title upon a fair Heraldry or production of Descents But the Families as opportunities offered themselves were generally restless under the Superiour House but those stirs were legally ended toties quoties by Parliamentary Recognitions But the final end was not procured by the clearness of an undoubted Title but by the Marriage of the Lancastrian King Henry VII with the Lineal Heiress of the House of York by which all competitions closed but Henry stood upon his own bottom in the National Recognition through all his Reign and neither yielded subjection to nor derived his Title from his Queen But yet let us see in dubitable cases how great your allowances would be and particularly in the Lancastrian Reigns Supposing then the Title between the two Houses dubitable or doubted only with one part of the Nation but certain to the rest shall both these Parts swear one Allegiance to the Title which is doubted by one Part against that Title which the other Part is certain of If so then you allow one Part of the Nation to swear against a Title which they know to be certainly Right Or must the doubting Part concede to the Title which others know to be Right If so then the Lancastrian Line cannot be admitted or capable of any your allowances Or must there in this Case be two Kings for the two Parties and two Allegiances in this one Realm Or what if the Competitors and Doubts multiply where shall these and their Divisions end But suppose the whole Nation to
Deliverance having forgotten that Compassion which I deeply have for all Royal Tragedies would be apt to make a jest of this and reply upon you that they have been served well enough in the first place before the Prince and Princess of Orange who are well enough served too and all as they deserve But I shall only observe your inconsiderateness of discourse in bringing in King James into the Catalogue of his own Heirs after his Cession upon which I said the Succession was not violently broken but altered by the consent of the next Heirs And this I think I may still defend without breach of modesty even tho' I should allow the proceedings of the Convention to have been violations of his Right For a violent Expulsion of a Possessor may consist with the true Succession of the next Reversioners But admitting the Cession or Abdication for real what need was there to solicit his further consent to our Establishments And for your Prince of Wales beside the doubt of the Nation concerning his Descent the late Queen brought him into a Cession before the Cession and Abdication of the King nor were there any Claims entred for him before the Convention and so he might be legally neglected for want of Claimer I know this has been charged on the Prince and the Convention for not admitting the Discussion of that Descent But I think no Law could oblige them to move it ex officio when he was absent and no Promoter appeared on his behalf But further to enquire into the Equity hereof if King James at the Prince's demand had called a Parliament that had been one of the Principal Articles to have been judicially determined by the Parliament between them But King James not calling a Parliament nor allowing the Convention power of Judgment herein there was no reason such a Question should be admitted there which if determined against King James and his Prince of Wales should not have concluded them but if given against the Princess of Orange should have confined and excluded her As to your politick stroke upon the Princess of Denmark I shall reflect no more than this that if she will permit you to the Conduct of her Counsels she is like to thrive mightily by it For you will advise her either to present flight or sedition only to make way for I know not what or how many new Princes of another Venter whose real Descent no one should ever know but the Men of the Mysteries Perhaps your Agents have laid the Seeds of Discontent between the two Princely Ladies already in order to form your other Projects but I hope that God that has hitherto preserved them in their natural Rights against all the Arts of those who would have illegitimated or intercepted their Sucession will still preserve her Royal Highness from the Snares you lay for her And since you have blurted out the Secret to the Publick she and the whole Kingdom have reason to take close notice of it Dyscher When we object the immoralities of these proceedings you tell us * Sol. Ab. p. 6. That the internal immorality of all Actions must be carefully distinguished from the Civil Consequences of them A Son say you by fraudulent Arts gets judgment in Law and seizes his Fathers Estate and Body by Execution and starves his Father in Prison this mans immorality is damnable Yet the Judges Sheriffs and other Officers are innocent It may be so while they act as Officers of Law and according to the directions of Law But if your Judges Sheriffs or other Officers join with and assist such a wicked Son or Daughter to effect such an Evil Act or do applaud and approve it when they know it be done by such wicked and unlawful Acts then their being Officers of Law will rather increase than diminish their Guilt T. B's 2d Lett. p. 23. Eucher Now all this I allow too whether done judicially or in forms of Law or no. But if it be done in private and not in Legal Forms it is nothing to our purpose or my objection But if the Judges sit in Judgment between the Father and the Son and very wickedly cast the Father in his Cause yet it being done in form of Law the Judgment will pass into such Execution as will be taken for formally legal tho' the Judgment be morally unjust and contract an heinous Guilt on the Conscience of the Judge So that still the Subject People are innocent in admitting the Acts of the Convention as Legal tho' really before God they had been Unrighteous Judges Yet because you herein sharpen a Dart against the King and Queen tho' I never intended my Objection to such a Reflection the Case you set is not parallel to ours For the Convention sate not in Judgment between the Father and Son and Daughter the Father not being subject in Law nor submitting his Cause to them but when the Father had left his Royal Estate the Prince calls them together to settle the forsaken State of the Kingdom which they did as it now stands And as this Judgment was in Form Legal and Authoritative so you cannot prove it immoral or injurious For as the Estates were not concerned to enquire into the temper of Spirit in the Contest between the Father and the Children toward each other which was not of Civil Cognizance so they debated only the Civil Purposes of King James's Actions and how the state of this Land might be legally and securely fixed after his Desertion in which they acted as Legal Judges and no otherwise What was done before or out of Convention by any of the Members and the inner motions and aims of particular mens minds there sitting during these agitations these are extrajudicial and so not chargeable on the whole Court as a Council of State as being no parts of their formal Determinations Dyscher So for your Robbers and Pirates a man may lawfully suffer by them tho' it were better if he could escape it But if you will plead that their Robberies and Piracies are lawful if you say they acquire a just Right to what they get by such wicked means or if you actually joyn with them and rob and share in their Booties you will be as very a Rogue as they and which is most like the Case I leave others to judge T. B's 2d Lett. p. 24. Eucher This it seems is your reply to what I said * Sol. Ab. p. 6. That Wars and Victories are many times unjust yet they that suffer the injury lawfully submit to the unlawful and injurious demand of Submission as in Piracies and other like Tyrannies And is not this a pretty Refutation of that Assertion to say that all that assert assist and share in Wrong are Rogues The reason of my instance was that such Pirates and Tyrants often seize on such as they have no Right of Dominion over and may perhaps threaten to torture or destroy them except they submit and contract
all Christendom at this day principally seemeth to depend And this and all that I have said to you I speak with all sincerity which if it persuade not you I cannot help that but I think it is a reasonable ground for that Allegiance which I have not carelesly or inconsiderately given Dyscher You do us manifest injustice when you suppose or feign that we admit no Settlement under Powers procured by the breach of Gods Commandments And this in all reason you must do knowingly and wilfully because I think there is not one who on our behalf hath concerned himself in the matter of the Convocation-Book but hath stated this Question and always admitted a thorow Settlement whatever were the means whereby it was procured 'T is true we neither commend nor encourage such wicked doings but on the other hand we do not think Dominion to be founded in Grace and that a man cannot have a good Title unless he be a good Christian We can mourn over the bad man whilst we submit to the good Title But we complain that we have no Settlement nor any thing like a good Title to which we may submit For who can own that to be a good Title against which there are prior and better Titles in being contesting and claiming Or who can take that for a Settlement where a bad Title by bad means is maintained against a just and good Title T. B's 2d Lett. p. 25. We say that a full Settlement in one while another who has Right claims and endavours to recover his Right is contradictory nonsense T.B. ibid. p. 40. Eucher I very well know and freely own that all your Disputations upon the Convocation-Book do in terms allow a full Settlement however procured tho' you contradict the Convocation in your notions of a thorow Settlement But it does not therefore follow that all of your Party think so The most that I have orally discoursed stand upon the breach of the Moral Laws as the grand exception against the Right on which only they can swear Allegiance since say they Allegiance follows Right and Right cannot be founded in Acts morally Evil Note That in Sol. Ab. p. 8. I did not make Dyscheres positively to deny Submission to all Settlements procured by breach of Gods Commandments because I know they do not all deny it but because it is the common Objection with most of them in point of Conscience I made Dyscheres reply not should say No and essentially injurious and consequently by such there be be no full or thorow form of Settlement And if you will give me leave to deliver my Opinion I think if Gods Providence had not so disposed of things as to bring that absolutely No but what if I Book into publick Light by the hand of my Lord Arch-Bishop Sancroft in this very Juncture all your Pleas would have chiefly stuck in the Laws of God whose violation with you should have been alone sufficient to have nulled all Rights and Titles But now as it is you are pinched by the Authority and the Edition of that Book and forced against your wills to own it and have no relief but in forced Arts of Evasion Such is that demure Protestation that you do not think Dominion founded in Grace which you know was and is a pretence toto coelo distant from our matter as claiming all Secular Rights by virtue of their Religious Character or Election But will you allow that a full and legal form of Settlement can be founded in any Act really injurious I would have you speak out without boggling or clouting your Tongue If not then the Defect of Plenitude in such Settlements stands in the iniquity and breach of moral Justice and Gods Commandments And in truth this at last is the true English of all those Reasons on which you complain that we have no Settlement nor any thing like a good Title tho' those Reasons are wrapped up in forms of words chiefly relating to Civil Laws For the sum of all is the Possession of another mans Right is no full Settlement because it has no good Title as being a violation of Right and Gods Commandments Of which I shall have occasion perhaps to discourse more anon In the mean time as I have already given you part of my sense herein so will I now deliver and settle it as full viz. That when several persons claim Right then pendente lite either in Law or War the Legal Presumption of Right must be for the quiet Possessor but after judgment given to be in the person to whom it is adjudged till reverse of judgement and all other antecedent Titles and Pretensions are to be deemed null and cessant to all Civil Effects and Constructions whatsoever the Errors or mens private Senses herein may be and the condemned Titles must not be taken to be good and still in being tho' new claims and contestations may be promoted by the outed Party Which being premised I can easily yield you that that can be no good Title against which there are prior or better Titles apparently in being contesting and claiming and that it is no full and Legal Settlement where an apparently bad Title is by bad means apparently maintained against a Title apparently just and good But this is not to be taken in a judged Cause But who was Judge between King James and King William while the former disputed the new Possession of the later with the Sword to determine the Civil Practice of the Nation If none then were we to abide by King Williams quiet form of possession If there were any Judge it was foreign or domestick Now there neither was nor could be a foreign Judge to oblige us if domestick it was either private or publick if private that cannot oblige the whole Nation if publick then it was in the Estates convened but they have judged King James's Title void and Cessant and not in being and so tho' extrajudicially claimed neither just nor good But if you will neither allow quiet Possession nor publick Judgment as a Rule to State Titles Legally but will throw up all to private Opinions or Humours you dissolve all the ties of Civil Society into Eternal Wars and Commotions But because you clamour that we have no Settlement I will make further Advances and prove the Admission of their Majesties by the Estates of this Land to be a full and proper Settlement tho' against King James's claim and contest from the Laws of this Land the universal Usage of all Nations natural Reason and Holy Scripture Dyscher This is a teeming Promise have a care lest the Production be ridiculous Eucher First then I begin with the common Laws of this Nation which are nothing else but the constant and general Customs of England which Lawyers justifie for good and binding upon a fair presumption of their Descent to us from some immemorial Compositions Real and National made by our Fore-fathers whose Acts and Contracts
for future Ages do by the Laws of all Nations bind their Posterities that are yet in their Loins as in the lowest degree of minority till they are validly vacated And such Obligations are justified by sacred Instances as in the Oath of Jacob's Children to carry Joseph's Bones out of Egypt in the Covenants between God and Noah Abraham Moses in the League of Israel with Gibcon and all other their National Contracts and the Laws of Jonadab on the Rechabites c. So that fidelity to the Contracts Ordinances and Compositions Real of our Fathers and Ancestors obliges us to the Customs that yet continue as the Common Laws of England from that supposed Original And thus their Legal Obligation is founded not in Force but in Truth and Honesty Which being premised I add that our Nation in these two last Parliaments after a full Debate hath judged their Admission of King William and Queen Mary according to our Laws Legal and the second Parliament hath moreover recognized them King and Queen of Right according to those Laws And the first Parliament upon this Constitution fixed on them the full Allegiance of the Subject to be secured by Oath as much as to any other Kings whatsoever that so they might thro'ly make this present Settlement full and entire which therefore they judged to be such according to our Laws without any concurrence and notwithstanding the opposition of the Late King which on his Cession or Abdication could in their Judgment create no defect in this present Settlement since the Confusion and Anarchy we were put into thereby did in their Judgments give them a Legal Right to resettle as they could under the then Exigences for the Common Preservation nor did they judge us tied to a State of continued Anarchy during King James's pleasure that while he provided for himself in France by his own private Counsels without the consent of the Nation we should be at no liberty at home to provide for our selves against a Ruin otherwise impendent and inevitable And if we look back to all the Changes in the Succession ever since there have been two Houses of Parliament the full and final Settlement after all Ruptures Disorders and Disputes hath determined in the Recognitions and Allegiances enacted by these Parliaments even without the consent and against the presumed claim of the outed Competitors tho' these were sometimes Lineal Heirs and present in the Land Much less then is such consent or cessation of pretence or claim in the relinquishing and absent Competitors necessary to the fulness and validity of such Settlements And tho' the Dispossessed afterward moved Stirs and Wars against those past Settlements that becomes no Argument against their real plenitude for the time being in form of Law for by those new Commotions they designed to reduce themselves into such a full form of Settlement by Parliamentary Recognitions out of which by present Wars they designed to eject their settled Adversaries for to a fuller Advancement they could never raise themselves by the greatest force and successes whatsoever Thus all the precedent Usages in such cases lay before our Estates first in Convention and since that in Parliament and according to these have they made this Settlement as legally full and Obligatory as 't was possible as judging it to be so full in its own Nature and Reason without any present Defects or Capacities of addition Dyscher I wonder you cannot observe here what you readily can when it makes for you that the first Constituting Parliament did not recognize King William and Queen Mary to be de jure but excluded that Assertion out of the Oath But the second Parliament recognized their Right tho' hereby as you will say they added nothing of that intention to the Oath Now then the first Settlement to which those being tacked bears proportion going no further than a Constitution de facto was not at the full because it came not up to the fuller Recognition de jure which being judicially apparent is with you the Legal Form of Title and Ground of Allegiance And so the Oath being required to a Settlement that was not thro'ly full cannot by Bishop Overals Convocation Book be proved due from both Clergy and Laity for that the Settlement to be sworn to was herein defective And herein even Mr. Johnson is more sincere and honest than you who scorns to pay * Pres to the Argument p. 12 13 14. Allegiance upon any kind of Success or forms of Settlement except they are really founded upon Legal Right Eucher It will be as easie for you to observe as for me to remark that the Recognition is but a Declaration not a Constitution of Right and so adds nothing of Right that before was really wanting but more fully declares the Right that stands and is founded in the first Constitution which actually was at full before tho' not so fully declared this Recognition being designed not only to repress the Contradictions of their Majesties Right and Title but to compose as much as might be mens Doubts and Surmises and perhaps this your very Objection hereupon But whatsoever be the Rights Titles or Pretensions of Princes to Crowns antecedent to the actual Settlement they may be fair preparations and grounds of claim but they enter not into the essential form and constituent Reason of a full actual Settlement which commences and consists purely in a Legal Form of Admission by the Estates of this Realm judging for themselves that they may lawfully admit this or that Pretender or Sollicitor even when they are not permitted to judge any thing on the Right of his demand of such Admission which belongs to the Question de jure And to those that are thus de facto settled whether they had any real antecedent Right of claiming or no the National Allegiance is by publick Contract always given to the full without any distinguishing Measures Forms or Abatements And this is not only otherwise evident but is made more so by this present Recognition For this second Parliament that enacted this declarative Recognition of Right gave and could give no further Allegiance than had been before given on the meer Legal Form of Actual Settlement which they in their zeal would have done undoubtedly had they judged the first Settlement any wise deficient in it self or its Obligations to a plenary Allegiance which yet however is of no other form or virtue than that Allegiance which is always given even to meer Kings de facto Which shews the sense of our Nation to be that by our Law Allegiance is given to Kings not on the account of an antecedent real Title to the Crown but on the account of the Legal Form of Settlement into the Actual Possession thereof upon which there is no superiour Judge to hear nor determin Quarrels and Claims of Titles And you that require more to the nature of a full Settlement require more than the Convocation has done which assigns your
ingredient to a full Settlement or the Obligations to Allegiance founded thereupon For if a Nations Settlement be not full under New Powers till all the former lineal Heirs be Extinct or cease making their claims from Forreign Dominions I know not how many Ages may sometimes be necessary to fill the Settlement and it will be very hard if submission thereto for want of such a ground of plenitude should be Treason and all Sanguinary Commotions against it Pious and Loyal till the claim of all the Succeeding Heirs Lineal shall surcease for ever Or if you will allow a term for Prescription against all after claims then you must allow that a Settlement attaining to Prescription may exclude a Native Right or that a Native Right ceases by such a Tract of Continuance If it excludes Right only then you are no more to comport with it than with present Settlements exclusive if the Right ceases I pray shew me by what equity mere time can destroy a right in me Anno. 93. which was whole and within Memory Anno. 92. especially since the Regestries of Lines Royal usually endure as just Records that will out-live the longest ocular Testimonies and personal Memories whatsoever For the reason why Prescription passes Title is when there is no Authentick Evidence or memorial to the contrary And I will further note that the same Laws of Nations which admit prescriptions as a form of Title do not therefore assert the Title really right in the original means of procuring it but only externally Legal for want of better Evidence Prescription in it self being the weakest form of Title that must give place to all others if verified in foro and its ground or reason is only a supposed Composition Real I say supposed only not Asserted And those very Laws of Nations do not always suppose those Compositions every way right but only Legally Authoritative and Settling and do indeed allow such present Settlements within memory to be as Legal and Valid as those which being out of record and beyond memory can but be supposed Legal and this with more reason because men can better judge of what is present than of what is past into a Tohu an Age in which all things are forgotten Dyscher You are very long and I am almost tired considering the Zeal that is in me Eucher I have kept you so long under the Fatigue because what I ever thought has lately appeared in your Prints that the total ground of the Schism between us lies in this point of Right For you all say that Allegiance follows a thorow Settlement but a thorow Settlement is founded in the Right of him that Reigneth So that if admit the wrong then immediately all our Prayers for him are Immoral Polluted and Abominable as conteining Imprecations against the right and justice of him that is wronged and giving God Praise for the Advancement of the Usurper which we blasphemously attribute to God Whence there follows a necessity that all good Bishops Priests and People renounce Communion in these Liturgies and with all that use them and that if hereupon they be deprived by the Usurpers of all the Publick Advantages of their Ministry they must keep up holy Ministrations among themselves for so the Rule is set and agreed for with most prodigious Zeal and no less Accuracy and Learning by your admirable Author of Christian Communion But I wonder this great Man did not see how Tottering and Casual the visible State of Religion then must be upon every turn of the secular State and the various Competitions for the Sovereingty For how is it possible that Godly Pastors and their Flocks can be all unanimously certain at all times whore the real Right and Justice lies when matters of Fact and Law are so remote from their Cognisance Nor will your evasion of doubtful Cases which you allow much to heal the matter For in all such cases some will assert an indubitable Right others a dubitable one and that on both sides at the same time And thus your indubitable Men must fall into a state of Schism or Separation from each other upon their contrariant confidences in the Right of the opposite Claimers And your dubitable men must either be neuter to all Communion or choose a Communion with one or other of the indubitables at all adventure which to do with a doubting mind is a Sin and Snare And so it is in our present case Some says 't is indubitable that K. James is King de jure and that K. William is not King at all others say as indubitably that K. James is not King at all but K. William is King de jure others own K. William to be King only de facto and K. James de jure others that are indubitably for his being de facto doubt his being de jure King And a great number through ignorance confide or doubt more or less in all these points which they cannot reach Now since Practice must follow Principles and rules of Conscience how shall we settle all these under one Religious Communion on that Authors Maxims There is no possible way but by following the direction of the Convocation Book in Obeying the thorow Settlement of the King de facto made by publick Submission or continuance the form of which being a point of Law not Religion must be determined and defined by the Supremest Domestick Judgment we have in Civils which Certainly is that of Parliament after whose Decisions we need no further Torment our selves in vain about Antecendent questions but consider the Right we have as well as Duty to Live quiet under Publick Formal and Judicial Settlements which we are to take as Gods Ordinance for the time being By which Rule we shall secure our selves from both Extreams either of owning forcible Entry for Legal Title or proper Settlements or of Asserting all Change of Government to be Invalid and unobliging as Contrary to the Law of God who we know changeth Times and Seasons and all the Kingdoms of the Earth and Dissolves and Resettles all the States of Men under proper Laws of Constitions according to the Just and Unsearchable Counsels of his Will And now I will only apply your Rules of Communion to our Case and so dismiss this Theorie If this present Settlement be full and the Judgment of the Nation herein against your Right then all your Prayers and Execrations against the present State are Irreligious Immoral Polluted and Abominable and under an ipso facto Anathema upon which all Christians must abhor your Communion even without any Ecclesiastical Sentence as being self-condemned and cut off And if all these Dangers and Snares await us upon every Civil Change upon Mens Private Cross Opinions about Right and Plenitude of Settlement Christian Religion Ecclesiastical Union could not have continued a Twelve-Month under the Changes of the Empire from Nero to Vespasian but must have Expired before it had been Exposed to the World And I desire
the Learned Casuist to Suit his Principles if he can with the Conditions and Capacities of Human Life and after Good endeavours this way he will find that these Civil Questions are not of Private Determination But if there be such Dreadful Dangers of Immoral Devotions on such Contested Rights of Government they Naturally ly on them who in Civil matters Oppose their Private Conceptions and Practices to Publick and Judicial Constitutions which is a Course in its own Nature formally Seditious and for that cause Un-Christian and may too truly and sadly Corrupt their Communion and Defile their Devotions who will not know the ways of Peace Dyscher You will needs suppose that if it be the Life of King James then it is not the Breach of Gods Commandments that Incapacitates the Prince of this Crown But why may not both do it For because the Lawful King is Living and Claiming therefore the Commandments of God require of all his Subjects that they Pay him their Dutiful and Loyal Obedience They ought by all means to Support him in his Throne or Restore him to it as his Condition requires T. B. 2d Let. p. 20. Eucher In the Murther of a Parent King by his Son and Heir * Sol. Ab. p. 8. I proved that the sin did not Incapacitate the Parricide but that our Constitutions admit him to the Crown which you not being able to deny I conclude that Breach of Gods Commandments Nulls not a Title procured thereby And then you Assign the cause hereof that the Parent and all his Rights are Extinct by his Death but King James's Life and Contestation Diversifies his Case Then I rejoyn that it is not the Breach of Gods Commandments that Incapacitates the Princes of this Crown but the Life and Contention of King James And is not this an Accurate and an undeniable Observation For if Breach of Gods Commandments either alone creates or with other Causes concurs to a Civil Incapacity then such Breach doth either partially or solely obstruct such capacity And if so the Murther of a Royal Father must be some Bar to the Succession of the Parricide But if it be none at all in that Case why should a less Sin against God Preclude a Title in another Case in Conjunction with another Cause which yet your selves will not dare deny to be alone Enclusive of King Williams Title Here then I will sift you upon this Point Would the continued being and Claim of King James Incapacitate King William of the Royal Title if King William had never broken any Commandment of God or No If you say Yea then the Breach of Gods Commandments Contributes nothing to King Williams Incapacity which alone ariseth by it self from the Life and Claim of King James it being Naturally impossible for two Men to be Total and Separate Proprietors of the same Right at one time a truth not at all belonging to Ethic's or Divinity If you say No then you yield that King William may be Entitled to King James's his Throne without breaking Gods Commandments even during the permanency of King James his Life and Right And han't you hereby well amended the matter But such are the results of affected Sophistries especially when they are Impertinent also Now that yours are so will be hence Manifest For our Question last was whether no Settlements procured by Breach of Gods Commandments must be Submitted to and particularly such as follow the Extinction of the former Proprietors Tenure and Title through such ill means And now you Answer me that Gods Commandments do Incapacitate King William of King James's Crown because King James's Title is not Extinct but Lives with him Which if it had been true I should also have denied King William a capacity to the Title not from the Moral Law but from Natural and Legal Impossibility And therefore I suppose King James's Tenure first Extinct when I say * Sol. Ab. p. 8. But if His Tenure be Extinct as it hath been Publickly judged by this Nation our Oath to him Ceases tho' be contend never so much for the Recovery And there I take it for necessary that the Judgment of the Nation must overballance all your contrary private Opinions as to all our publick Duties and Obligations Now when your words are disinvolved they amount to no more than this that the Law of God forbids one Man to seize on another Mans Permanent Right and Title in which as it is nothing to the Rhombus so you have no adversary But this is not your second or single Failure but here appears a third point of Ignorance for our Question was not what Gods Comments do forbid but whether the doing what God forbids in order to the procuring formal Titles and Tenures in Law by the real or Judicial Extinction of another Mans Tenures does Create a Civil Incapacity or Nullity in the Tenure so acquired This is what I deny and I defie you to Prove The instance of a Royal Heir upon the Murther of his Father is an unmovable Argument for me for tho' the Laws of God forbid him to procure the Crown that way yet if he violates those Duties the Laws of God do not null the Tenure acquired by forbidden Wickedness The Law of God forbad David to Usurp Vriah's wife while the Hittite's Title in her continued with his Life and the King might actually keep her but by no Legal form of Tenure The same Law of God forbad the King to Murther Vriah with the Sword of the Children of Ammon in order to a Matrimonial Tenure of his wife Yet when that wickedness was compleated the Title of the King in Bathsheba was Legal and valid even by the Judgment and Ratification of God himself Nay when Ahab had slain Naboth by Judicial Condemnation for falsly imputed Blasphemy the form of Title by which he after enjoyed Naboths Vine yard was Legal by Judicial Forfeiture tho' it were Morally unjust in the sight of God for had there been a Civil Nullity therein it had been necessary for him to have compassed Naboths Death by Capital Sentence in order to a Civil Title which Jezebel procured for him this way to avoid the Odium of open and formal Un-entitled Usurpation So that had your Loud Obloquies against their Majesties morals been never so true Yet King James's Tenure being Extinct doth not preclude a Civil Title in their present Majesties which we are now to abide by and defend by the greatest Suffrage of Gods Laws Reason and the Laws of Nations at which expression I have heard that your Friend T. B. winds up his Mouth and * T. B's 2d Lett. p. 26. thanks God he hath not so Learned Jesus Christ And it is like to be true for he seems to have Learn'd but little of him at least in his Doctrine Learn of me for I am Meek and Lowly of heart and ye shall find rest to your Souls Dyscher To the Objection that Allegiance seemeth to imply
it into the body of the Oath and besides they knew it would have made many Persons abhor it but it is plain this they designed and tricked upon you Hence you may perceive that your slippery Remark will not deliver you from the Intention of the Imposer T. B. Sec. Lett. pag. 27. Eucher This Discourse is so involved and you talk of an Imposer so like an Imposer that it is somewhat difficult to trace out your Sense Yet this I will endeavour and if I can be lucky I will give you my Sense of it Here then we are to consider the Intentions first of the Constituting Parliament or Convention secondly of the Recognizing Parliament and thirdly of their Majesties in the Imposition of the Oath First then * Sol. Ab. pag. 9. I acknowledged that the Constituting as well as ensuing Parliament did judge it in their Lawful Right rebus sic stantibus to admit King William and Queen Mary And so they always judge that they for their part act Lawfully and of Right when they admit only a King de facto either when unlawfully forced or otherwise necessitated thereunto by insuperable Exigencies And so Men may Honestly for their part contract faithful Obedience to their Piratick Masters to preserve themselves tho' unlawfully brought into that Necessity This being done by the first Parliament and that in their Judgment on their part lawfully and justly they consider for an Oath of Allegiance always usual upon such new Constitutions And hereupon a Motion was made for an Assertion of Right to be inserted into the Oath but it was rejected This must therefore in legal construction evince that their intention in the Enacted Oath did not imply an Assertion of Right For tho' you can according to the Temper you are of opprobriously tax the Wisdom and Gravity of that Great Assembly yet we are obliged only to an open and sincere Intention not a tricked one especially that which you would trick upon them and us too that you might blacken and reproach our Innocency tho' yet how we could be tricked out of our Senses if Allegiance manifestly includes Right as you say I cannot divine However herein are two points of Right observable one in their Majesties taking the Crown and another in the Convention in the admission of them thereto And in both these they obliged us to Swear no Assertion but only as * Sol. Ab. pag. 9. I told you to promise that Allegiance due by our Laws to Kings thus actually admitted without any other charge upon us to Swear the Justice and Rectitude of their Proceedings of which there is no competent or superiour Judge or Witness but God Secondly After the Constituting comes the Recognizing Parliament who added a Declaration of their Majesties Right in taking and possessing the Crown as well as of the Rectitude of our Admission for this makes up the Title de Jure in their Majesties This might be the mental intention of the first Parliament but it was not by them promulgate or recognized which omission was therefore supplied by the second Parliament But notwithstanding this Recognition of Right they neither added nor altered any thing as to the Oath but that still stood and yet stands in its first Intention which it received wholly and solely from the first Parliament So that the first Parliament discharging us from an Assertion of Right in their and their Majesties Proceedings and Settlement in that Oath and the second Parliament doing nothing to the Oath it does not by its Recognition charge us to Swear more or otherwise than the first had done So that all the Right that can fairly be supposed owned and imported in taking and imposing that Oath is that private Subjects have a Right to Swear and pay that Allegiance which the Estates have thus fixed And here also we must distinguish between the Intentions of Judgments and Acts of Parliaments in all those Parts Points and Articles which the Subject Swears nothing to and those particular words or points which are directly set in the Oath and so proposed to common Observation For the former only oblige the Conscience of the Subject to exteriour and civil Duties without involving any interiour Censure or Sense upon the Moral Integrity and Conscience of our Masters But an Oath asserting the Moral Justice of Humane Intentions or Procedures is a dangerous snare in all Cases above a Man's understanding liable to debate doubt or question as all publick Politicks generally are especially with the Vulgar And if a Man may be allowed with Modesty to guess at the Piety of his Superiours it seems it is such a snare as the Parliament never intended to lay for themselves and therefore not for us for whom they must have began the Example For 't is rational to believe that most of the Members that really were of and for the Opinion de Jure as well on their Majesties Measures as their own in this Settlement would not willingly have Sworn that Right absolutely tho' they would have Sworn their belief of it For Matters of Fact of which alone we can be certainly conscious either by our outer or inner Senses are the only proper Matter of Assertions and especially legal Depositions But Points of Law and Right concerning Matters of Fact are more remote from that evidence and clearness of Sense and Perception than to be given upon Oath and are delivered by Courts as Judicial Opinions only that pass into a Civil Effect tho' the Judges if put to it would not always not any time willingly Swear the Infallibility of such Judgments especially the doubtful or dissenting Judges against their own private and personal apprehensions Thus then in Parliament the Matters of Fact appeared evident enough to the Houses but the Points of Law arising upon the Facts underwent much and long discussion upon which at last the Judgment for Abdication and an actual vacancy passed so that in their Opinion they for their part might in that State of Affairs proceed to this Settlement and upon these Opinions they acted as taking them for True Legal and Right Yet considering that most of both Houses were not Lawyers it is not imaginable that they could willingly have Sworn the certain and absolute Rectitude of these Opinions especially they who were of contrary Sentiments but over-ruled by the majority And hence the Assertion of Right was rejected from the Oath And I wish all Projectors of Oaths in points of Law Title and matters without our reach or power would follow and reverence the Exemplary Wisdom and Tenderness of our Parliaments herein that no tricks nor traps may be laid for Consciences in a State and Age in which we have given them so profuse a liberty But to return from this Progression the alteration from the old or last Form made in this Oath by the designed omission of asserted Right argues an intentional discharge of that difficulty or doubt in this present Oath which has nothing in
rejection of the Proposals for an Assertion of Right But I presage that all this procedure of the Sanhedrin or my Accounts of it will pass with you for pretty juggling who are so dextrous and hardy to reproach whole Nations as if you had been another Elias tho' herein I would advise you to premit your Reasons to your Censure In the Interim we will in the third place ascend to their Majesties intention herein Of which I shall in general say that no Man can evince that they intended any more in their imposition of the Oath than the Estates but if they did those personal intentions came not into the Act or Oath and so can be of no publick cognisance or obligation the Oath being made to satisfie their Majesties intentions indeed as far as they were uniform with the intention of the Estates but no further or otherwise And the Estates did indeed desire to satisfy their Majesties as far as justly they could without crucifying the Conscience of the Subject which could contribute nothing to the interest of their Majesties nor to the Honour of their Tenderness and Clemency So that the Question properly is whether the joint and complex intention of their Majesties and the Parliament in the Oath was That we should judge them to be a King and Queen that had no Right And here I answer that they never intended that we should deny the Right of their Title in Thought Word or Deed. Nay I add that in the Recognition they designed to create an Opinion and Belief in us of their Majesties Right as far as the publick Judgment of a Nation can morally conduce thereunto and also to silence all Tongues and Pens to the contrary but of what they gently willed Men to believe they did not presume to require a peremptory Oath thro' their excessive Tenderness for liberty of Conscience Now the intention we are upon by the good leave of the Syllogism is not the inclining will to perswade us to a Belief nor the authoritative will of silencing contradictions but that will which imposes the Oath i. e. what they willed and intended peremptorily to be sworn And this does not import so much as an assent or Belief much less an absolute assertion de Jure tho' King William is de Jure in the publick Judgment of the Nation And what ground have you to fancy that this is not satisfactory to their Majesties Their Right is publickly recognized a full Allegiance of the Subject upon Oath given with sufficient Laws for the Coercion of Recusants and all that is necessary to secure them in the Throne and can you dare to say they are not hereby satisfied because every Man is not bound to swear the Jus which many feeble Senses may not understand I hope you never heard of any Complaint made hereupon by their Majesties and if not 't is a bold and indecent Suggestion to object or surmise it but the most frontless rudeness of all is to say that the Nation was Tricked and open Nonsense to assert this of a project of concealing an intention of Right in words which you say manifestly include it Dyscher No doubt both Parliaments had the same intention and the Recognition was but a fuller Declaration of the Sense of the former Parliament in the Constitution And for such Bodies to ensnare us to a Belief of K. William's Right while we are taking Oaths to him is if not to command yet to insinuate Perjury since they that are hereby tricked into that Opinion intend the assertion of it in the Oath and the Opinion of Right being the Publick Doctrine the publick taking of the Oath without an express Denial of the Right doth either really or seemingly at least import an Assertion of Right and so gives a just Scandal to all Men of Integrity as looking like an Exemplary consent to and Profession of the Right and is as Exemplary a Snare to the Consciences of the Ignorant * T. B. Sec. Lett. p. 22. For has not William ravished away the Rights of all the Royal Heirs in Being Has he not violated the standing Laws of our Succession in seizing the Crown before his time Eucher To humour you for once let us suppose that K. William and Q. Mary had violated the Laws of Succession and so were not every way de Jure Sovereign yet the Assertion of Right being rejected at the framing of the Oath a little Care will remove all prejudices in our selves and others by observing that we swear no more than was expresly imposed in the form of the Oath with an explicit exclusion of that Assertion of Right and that other points and Acts consequent fall not under our intention by the will of the imposers against their Will But 't is in truth a bold thing but like you to take it for evident that their Majesties have broken the Laws of Succession when the whole Kingdom hath judicially determined otherwise 'T is indeed possible for a publick Opinion to be Erroneous and a private one on the contrary true yet nothing but an undeniable as it were Meridian Evidence must practically confront a publick Opinion against its Civil efficacy which I suppose you have not gotten against the Civil Judgment de Jure I will not here proceed on such Originals of Royal Title as will justifie Changes of Kings every day I will not cast in my Lot nor mix my Counsels with those seditious Men who by cajoling the Subjects into false Notions and aims of Power cokes them thereby into endless Ruins and Commotions I will only follow the good Ancient and constant Rules of Order Peace and Righteousness which alone can make us an happy People and Advocate for their Majesties Innocency toward these The ordinary Rule of Succession I still grant you to be Lineal or properly Hereditary so that if a Prince's Tenure be extinct by Death or otherwise the next Heir of ordinary Course should succeed But if a Question arise upon the Tenure whether permanent or cessant in a state of Anarchy and actual vacancy in the Throne or who is the next Heir this is most properly determinable by the Estates of the Kingdom as being our Masters and Trustees to oblige and direct our Allegiance Here then they judged King James's Tenure cessant by a virtual Abdication and the Princess of Orange the next Heir But considering the then state of Affairs they judged it absolutely lawful and necessary for the time being with the smooth concession of the two next Heirs apparent to invest the Order during the Prince's Life It was therefore changed but not violated and a temporary Change in the Course was admitted to secure the true Descent in a just Line for ever as appears by the settled and determined Series of Successors Dyscher Very well I see you and your Estates make nothing of the Prince of Wales But your Prince of Orange had before not only assaulted our Law but overturned the Government
of Crimes * Sol and Ab. pag. 19 20. as Apostasie Heresie Schism c. and demanded whether the Clergy and People may desert a Bishop under such pestilential crimes and impostures and procure another from Social Bishops For if they may Canonically do this in such Cases then perhaps they may canonically do so in other which tho' not so designedly malignant yet necessitate an exauctoration tho' founded in meer infirmities and too pious prejudices as I explained my self in those very passages at which it seems the gall of T. B. is exasperated Dyscher Well I think it not decent for us to draw hard on this invidious subject let us if you please discuss the Canonical forms of your procedure herein which your party generally defends from pretended precedents of Civil Authorities over the Jewish High Priests and the Practice of Christian Churches in submission to Imperial Orders especially the Greek Church under Turkîsh Changes made in their Patriarchal See Now the most famous instance among the Jewish High Priest is that of Solomons deprivation of Abiathar Which tho' you endeavoured to parallel to our present Case yet herein I brought you such just exceptions as neither you nor all your Party will be able to take off For if the Crime was nothing like if there was such a difference between the Constitutions of the Jewish and Christian Churches if it was a manifest Cession on Abiathar's part all which I well proved then that Instance can by no means come up to this Case T. B. Sec. Lett. pag. 36. Eucher Tho' I could not deny the force of your reasonings upon this instance yet have I consulted my friends upon it as well as you have done upon me And the chiefest of their senses I will lay before you to which if you can make any weighty reply you must not thence conclude a vice or fault in the Cause for if I cannot defend it my self perhaps its proper Patrons may who as they have singular Opinions so have they as singular abilities to maintain them Dyscher This is a secure Caution for your own Reputation tho' it betrays an inward suspicion of the Arguments you intend to produce But however since it is but just that no personal defects should prejudice a good Cause and that one man's Errors should not affect another man's Estimation I grant you your Demand and therefore I pray proceed Eucher Have you not seen the Book entitled The Case of Sees Vacant c. whose learned Authors felicity is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 This great man pretends to dissolve all your machins against this grand Precedent for a Lay-Deprivation and I will exhibite you his Argumentations according to your and his Order First then he observes that * Case of Sees Vacant c. Chap. 2. § 2. this perhaps may be the Plea of our Adversaries in answer to the examples of the Jewish High-Priest that the Office of a Bishop amonst us is much more Spiritual than the Office of those High-Priests To that Plea I answer that he that considers the true and full import of the Question now before us will find it to be no other than this whether a Person duly invested with an Ecclesiastical Office of God's own Institution and Ordinance being deposed by the Lay-power any other can lawfully succeed in that Office Now as to God's particular Institution and Appointment whatsoever otherwise the difference may be which is needless for us to contend about it is certain that the Jewish High-Priests were rather superior than inferior to our Bishops 'T was by God himself and that too in an extraordinary manner that the Office of the High-Priest was instituted and it was from God alone that he received his Authority If therefore a Person was accepted by God as a true and real High-Priest tho' put into the room of another deposed by Civil Authority then a Bishop likewise may be truly a Bishop and accordingly ought to be received tho' put into the place of a Bishop deposed by that Power To this I add that the annual Expiation for the Sins of the whole People was to be performed by the High-Priest This was the chief of the federal Rites of that Religion and that to which our Saviour's offering himself up a Sacrifice is particularly compared in the Epistle to the Hebrews And this they did ex opere operato so that it was of the greatest Consequence to the Jews to have this Divine Institution performed by one appointed to it by God And tho' no provision was made for Cases of necessity yet necessity was understood to be a provision for it self And it is certain these annual Expiations were accepted of God till our Saviour's days For that is a certain Consequence of their being still in Covenant with God since these Expiations were the yearly renewing of that Covenant Nor can any of the performances of the Christian Priesthood be compared to this unless we believe the Power of Transubstantiating These examples of the Jewish High-Priest alone were there no other to be alledged would sufficiently warrant our submission to our present Possessors Dyscher This Doctrine of that learned Doctors is very new and amazing in every Sentence of it as also is his original Principle But whether it be of sincere Metal or no must be tried by the proper Touchstone First then it is strange that he shou'd affirm it certain that the High-Priests are rather Superior to our Bishops as to the Divinity of their Institution For are not Bishops instituted originally by God himself and in a manner more extraordinary than that of Aaron's Consecration For this appears indeed in the Levitical Law to be divinely solemn and glorious as far as external Pomp and Ceremony could adorn it and an Oracular Power of Judgment in things Temporal sanctifie him but yet as the Agent for God in this Consecration was a Servant only viz. Moses so the Oracular Sanctity was not purely Spiritual But the first Bishops were the Apostles made so not by the Hand of a Servant but the Son of God himself in our own Flesh ordaining them with an extraordinary Power of Miracles of all kinds with the insufflation of the Holy Ghost in order to the remission and retaining of sins upon the Soul by the Acts of an Authority to be ratified in Heaven To them the Sacraments were committed the Laver of Regeneration and the Mystery of our Incorporation into Christ and Participation of his Holy Spirit besides the glorious Effusion of the Spirit on them at the Feast of Pentecost consecrating them Preachers of the Resurrection of Christ with an amazing Glory in the sight of all Nations gathered together at Jerusalem in a manner more superlatively divine than any the meaner Forms of Aaron's Investiture Besides the Doctor may as well prefer the Institution of the meanest Levites to that of the Highest Apostles upon the same grounds on which he hath so superexalted the Jewish Pontiff who was
no more divinely instituted than the lowest Orders of Levi tho' he was to higher Services Nor is the Doctor less mistaken in his extraordinary Esteem and Elogy of the Annual Expiation as more noble than any Episcopal Functions For notwithstanding all its Solemnities and Operations yet its highest Excellency was but Typical of that Grace which was not given by Moses but by Jesus Christ And all its actual present Energy reached no further than a legal imaginary Cleansing of the Body of the Jews and this only for one Year past and that only for the securing him in the Temporal benefits promised in that Law But our Priestly Functions are not merely Typical of Grace not yet given but both commemorative and exhibitory also of that Grace which hath already appeared for the Salvation of all Men and consecrates the Souls and Bodies of Men unto Immortality not to mention the extraordinary Measure of the Spirit collated in the especial Acts of Episcopal Ordinations In all which interiour Sanctifications tho' there is no Transubstantiation yet is there a mystical Union betwixt Christ and his Members by the illuminating Communion of the Holy Spirit For which truth it is needful that we contend tho' I confess it was needless for him to contend against it And yet further supposing all this had been right which the Doctor hath dictated yet here arises another Infelicity in his Logic For tho' God might admit an intruded High-Priest yet it does not follow that Men may admit an intruded Bishop for can Man pretend to all the Authorities of God God is indeed superior to all his own Institutions and may dispense with them or ratifie Violations of them as he did the violent Successions in the Kings of Israel But does it follow that Men can lawfully without any Divine Dispensation given and granted admit the Violations of his Laws and the perverters of that Hierarchy which he has made organical to the Sanctity and Salvation of his Church Nay further yet the Doctor is very unaccurate in his very State of the Question which properly is not whether any Man may lawfully succeed an Ecclesiastic deposed by a Lay-power for if we grant that there can be any such Lay-deposition no doubt the Succession may be lawful but the Question is whether there can be any Ecclesiastical Deposition inflicted on Spiritual Orders by a Lay-power This is that we and our Fathers complain of that the Lay-powers enact Spiritual Censures of Suspension and Deprivation which your Ecclesiastics admit as regular and valid which were they so we should not quarrel at the Successions This I am sure is our Question whatsoever that of the Baroccian Treatise is if this differs from ours then in that respect the Treatise is impertinently adduced in our Case Besides the Question is not whether a Person duly invested with an Ecclesiastic Office of God's Institution may not be deposed by any Lay power For if God in the Jewish Church did subject their Ecclesiastics to a Lay-deposition no doubt in the Nature of the thing it might be lawful But the Question is whether first God did so subject the Jewish Ecclesiastics to such a Lay-authority And secondly supposing that God had so subjected their Ecclesiastics the next Question is whether he hath in like manner so subjected the Christian Hierarchy For if there be any specific Difference or intentional Disparity in the Nature and Purposes of the Jewish and Christian Religions if there have been such Changes admitted by God in the Authorities of one which have not been so conceded upon the Authorities of the other then the Argument from the Jewish doth not conclude upon the Christian Hierarchy And therefore by the Doctor 's leave not only the Divinity of the Institution but the Nature of the Offices and the Rules of Tenure and Succession instituted by God in his Church are to be considered in this Debate For to put the matter into a short Theory I think it fairly possible to conceive that the Jewish Religion in what it was peculiarly Jewish was only of a carnal Sanctity in Order only to Temporal Fruitions and so might be under the Conduct of Temporal Powers that are the Supreme Guardians of all Temporal Enjoyments but the Christian Religion is purely Spiritual not subordinated to Temporal Ends and so not under the like Authority of Temporal Powers Now whatsoever are the civil Authorities about matters Christian I suppose the Essential Differences of our Religion from the Jewish will bar the Argument for the same Rules of Subjection And if you please upon another Consultation to propose the matter to the Doctor 's second Thoughts I will be at the pains of repeating my Observations hereupon †Sol. and Ab. Pag. 21 22. First that the whole Institution of the Levitical Law was not of a Spiritual but carnal Sanctity yielded them by God somewhat in opposition and somewhat in conformity to the Aegyptian or other foreign Religions among whom the Priesthood had been long subjected to and perhaps first instituted by the Scepter And herein the Supreme Judgments in Civils upon the Law and Oracular Responses upon Consultations about Peace War and Temporal Actions and Successes were essential to the Authority of the Pontificate And yet we find this High-Priest not subject to any ordinary Power till Kings were also given this People after the manner of the Nations among whom the Mitre was subject to the Crown All which put together makes Abiathar 's Deprivation by a Temporal Power under that Constitution Legal But from the beginning it was not so Then there were Priests who till the Flood had the Government of the World without any Civil or Military Power and that Priesthood was in all its Intentions Spiritual So that when our Saviour came not only to restore but even to refine upon the primitive Rules he restored the Priesthood from Vassalage and founded his Hierarchy not in Princes but Apostles not inarmed but in unarmed Powers But if among the Nations of old the carnal Priesthoods were subject to Arbitrary and Imperial Powers and God conceded the Jews Kings with such Power after that Gentile manner the Jewish High-Priests thereupon became Subject not only to a Judicial but Imperial Authority and so legally deprivable at the pleasure of the secular Prince so far at least that these Censures might be effectually valid tho' not always good and just And hence all the Changes of the High-Priests violently and arbitrarily made by heathen Princes in the Jewish Pontificate seem to be legally and regularly valid ex jure Imperii toties quoties and so are nothing at all to the Case of an uncanonical Deprivation or the Doctor 's purpose But our Priesthood has nothing Civil in it nor is by God subjected to the Arbitrary Empire of Princes that so we should think our selves obliged to bow down our Faith and Freedom to such feeble Principles of Spiritual Bondage and Pusillanimity Eucher But a little to