discouragement cannot therefore proceed from that God who has put the sword into his hand to execute wrath against them that doe evil And as it opens a gap to all falseness and confusion by taking away the ancient landmark as it were and boundaries of peace that onely which puts an end to all strife and contention can have no title nor pretence to that spirit of God who is not the authour of confusion but of peace as in all parts and places of the world so especially among Christians and therefore no cause of Christ no fulfilling of his Prophecies no pulling down of Babel can warrant us to it in all the Churches of the Saints Sir I have been the longer in this that I may be the shorter in the rest and cut off all farther pretensions to a Commission in any of you for the present change by proving you all uncapable of it that De Jure you cannot have it and therefore De Facto have it not Though supposing you capable and so in potentia for it your Arguments fall infinitely short of proving that actually you have any SECTION V. For first In order to your proof you suppose That Babel is to be destroyed in a warlike way by the people of God and this say you plainly enough Truely that De futuro it is to be so destroyed I conceive is not over plain For that men of singular Learning and Piety and not brib'd by any particular Interest have upon diligent search and enquiry otherwise concluded of it viz. Hugo Grotius Dr. Hammond and others Who have all proved and that perhaps plainly enough too that That Prophecy is already fulfilled in the destruction of Jerusalem and Rome heathen But to give you scope here likewise and grant that Babel remains yet to be destroyed What passages are those in the Revelation which give you so plainly the length of the weapon too And from whence you conclude it must be in a warlike way Sir It is a saying in Philosophy Vnumquodque nutritur iisdem principiis ex quibus fit Every thing is to be propagated and preserved by the same principles by which it was planted Now This warlike way you mention was never chosen by our Lord we know for the bringing Christianity into the world And why then for the spreading and growth of it And being expresly and professedly disclaimed in the beginning how comes it now to be so pious and necessary in the conclusion The weapons of our warfare says St. Paul are not carnal but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds c. And so speaking of this very Babel this Mass and man of sin to be destroyed Whom the Lord shall consume says he not with Sword or Spear but with the spirit of his mouth and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming i. e. by the powerfull evidence and illustration of his Holy Spirit in the Gospel The Babel to be destroyed is a spiritual Kingdom not the persons of wicked men but their lusts and spiritual fornications the Heathenism and Idolatry of Rome and not the Empire or Emperours of it The evil principles say you both in relation to Spirituals and Civils which ruled most eminently in it Which being spiritual is therefore shotfree falls not under the reach or power of a material sword to be wounded by it And therefore when we reade some expressions in the Revelation sounding generally this way as of warring and killing and the like we must remember that this Book is a Prophecy and so written in a Prophetical style Wherein Christ's Victory over the hearts and spirits of men is ordinarily describ'd in those military terms and as making use of such engines and instruments as Kings and Captains are wont to doe in the management of their wars But to retrench all this too and supposing it plainly and downright in a warlike way yet why must this be done by the people of God For so the people I presume you mean in opposition to Princes and Governours else it serves not at all to your purpose Whenas yet the ten Horns in the 17 th Chapter of the Revelation and 16 th verse who are manifestly said to be ten Kings in the 12 th verse of that Chapter are those that shall hate the Whore and make her desolate and naked c. And surely Sir I dare be positive in this whatever should become of the rest That no Prophecy or prediction in the whole Bible can secure subjects and private persons much less oblige them to such a war And herein 't will be worth your while to consider David's case and observe the judgment he makes upon it God had foretold and promised that the Kingdom of Israel Saul being now rejected should be Established upon David To which he was therefore actually anointed by Samuel Which highly exasperating the rage and madness of Saul against him after many private attempts in vain and without success he causelesly pursues poor innocent David and musters up all the Trainbands and Militia of his Kingdom to destroy him But David still shifting and flying for his life takes sanctuary at last in the sides of a Cave Whither Saul being in his march after him by chance turns aside from his Army for the easement of Nature and so falls singly and unawares into David's hands But David and his Men being all this while unseen or unperceiv'd by him were in Consultation what they had now to doe David was design'd by God and anointed to the Kingdom most unjustly persecuted and hunted as a Partridge upon the Mountains by this very Saul who is now in his hands So far from a Crown which yet God had promised him that as long as Saul liv'd and at liberty he could not but be every day in eminent peril of death To which he might hereafter be thought accessary himself as likewise of the frustrating God's promise to him concerning the Kingdom if he should let slip this present advantage and regardless of this signal providence of God in bringing Saul so strangely and unexpectedly into his hands should suffer him to escape And to this purpose his Officers mind him how this wonderfull piece of providence was exactly in answer to a former Prophecy Wherein God had promised to bring David's enemy into his hand that he might doe to him what seemed good unto him But all these arguments how fair and demonstrative soever they might seem to others David easily discerns to be fallacious God's anointing him to the Crown did not dispence with him from obedience to his Commands or privilege him therefore to be his own Carver He that spake it had ways enough of bringing it about though David continued still in his integrity He shall one day descend into the Battel says David and perish Wickedness proceedeth from the wicked but my hand shall not be upon him Though Saul be injurious towards him and forget his duty as a King in
persecuting and pursuing the bloud of an innocent Subject whom he ought rather to protect and defend Yet this will give David no advantage of renouncing his Allegiance or rising up against the life of his Sovereign And therefore the Prophecy if Saul be the enemy intended in it is yet no command nor carries any the least shadow of allowance or dispensation with it to doe what is evil in God's Eyes Whereby it will be apparent that this great providence of God in the fulfilling and completion of this Prophecy and bringing Saul into his hands was but for a greater trial which God was pleased to make of his Faith and Loyalty to tempt and prove him as he did Abraham before whether he would make use of any indirect course for the bringing about pious and religious ends Or whether as he had received the promise of the Kingdom from God's mere favour to him he could now rely and rest himself wholly upon his power and wisedom even against all the seeming difficulties and impossibilities of flesh and bloud for the enstating it upon him Wherein he so piously acquits himself as notwithstanding the Prophecy they mention to him and this Providence before his eyes together with that carnal prudence which was questionless suggested to him he lets Saul escape Not onely refuses to be his judge not onely absents himself from the sentence and execution but urges and pleads and persuades with his Men not to meddle with him Who can stretch forth his hand against the Lord's anointed and be guiltless Thus subduing the Kingdom and obtaining the promise by Faith as it is witnessed of him while he seems to undoe all to frustrate the promise and forfeit his claim to the Kingdom for God's sake or rather than be guilty of sin in the procuring of it And now let us look back a while and put your case in the same balance with David's and see if you fall not so much short of him in the premisses as you have wickedly out-dar'd and out-done him in the Conclusion David was elected by God and actually anointed by his holy Prophet to the Kingdom You were tied up under the Oath of God against it So far from any lawfull possibility of taking the Kingdom to your selves as you were obliged with life and limb to prevent the designs and Conspiracies of any other and to secure it to the King and his Heirs after him for ever David was an innocent injur'd person one that by Saul's appointment had done most eminent and almost miraculous service against his enemies beside many personal and particular obligations to Saul himself In reward whereof he is now bloudily pursued by Saul and all the power of Israel to take away his life Whereas you after many concessions and Acts of Grace from the King drive him away from his own house with Tumults and popular violence pursue him immediately with an Army imbitter the minds and mouths of the people with all the foulest and falsest reproaches that could be spit against him rob him of his whole revenue turn the deaf ear to all his desires of returning and maliciously prevent and frustrate his renued messages and petitions as I may so term them for peace and accommodation And then lastly for the Providence that signal providence of God in bringing the King into your hands which must be thought to supersede all this and not onely so take away the poison and malignity of this Coloquintida like stirring the water with the Unicorns-horn but baptize all these your trayterous and disloyal actions into just and necessary and religious Nay urge and engage you farther First to imprison and then to Murther your Sovereign For so the following of providence is made the onely via recta and wherewith you as easily silence and swallow up all arguments and objections brought against you as Moses's serpent did the serpents of the Magicians This case of Providence I say of all other runs widest from the parallel and wherein God did as plainly discriminate himself to you and David as David and you have differenc'd and discriminated your selves from each other in the contrary use and application of it For whereas Saul indeed was brought by God's providence according to his former promise into David's hands while he had never the least aim or design at any such thing but always declin'd it and was now in his flight lurking here in this Cave merely for fear and thereby to avoid him who was furiously now upon his March after him What was there of this I beseech you in your case Nay say if all things were not quite contrary For beside your no promise or prophecy for it how many precepts and penalties are urged by God against it Beside your not declining to get the King into your power as David did how many wicked arts and strategems are put in practice to bring it about And whereas you might have thought it something of Providence it may be to have kill'd the King at random or to have taken him prisoner in the field in any one of those great successes you had upon his party though 't is sure Where God is shut out of the cause and quarrel as in that of subjects against their Sovereign there can be no pretence at all of his providence in whatever he suffers to be brought about yet it is very observable and wherein it would well become you to take notice of God's providence That besides those Oaths of Supremacy and Allegiance renued by you at your entrance into the Parliament or before you could sit there in any capacity to consult and carry on the war against him How did God provide for the King's safety when you your selves even of your selves without the King did engage your selves and the whole Kingdom First by a Protestation And Secondly your selves and your whole party even without and against the King's consent by a Solemn Vow and Covenant never to be forgotten to defend and preserve his Person and Honour And when all this could not get him into your hands how did God provide for the King again when all his party being slain generally and faln into your hands He yet carries him into the Scots army where you could not compass him at last but by fresh Engagements of safety and honour to his Person Nor is he yet in your hands your hands I mean of the Army who pretended at last to have power over him of which no other account can be given I think than that of Providence till by new Treasons and Rebellions you had plainly acknowledged the depth and desperateness of your former villany And by rising up against your own Masters and violently snatching the King from them once at Holmeby and again at the Isle of Wight by whose authority and Commission onely you were put into arms against him and whereby you did seem and seek to excuse your selves from the crime of Rebellion in so doing you did thereby
manifestly accuse and condemn your selves for it So that nothing hardly I may say was ever permitted by God that was more fully and sufficiently provided against by him Who in farther care of the King's safety and preservation besides the many several and plain Laws both Humane and Divine and your own voluntary wilfull Oaths to this purpose yet lest he should fall into your hands the barbarous bloudy hands of the Army God did damm up the way against it by a complication of Treasons mutually accusing and bearing witness against each other whereby the King was yet as safe from falling into your hands as it was certain you would not condemn your selves For thus your first rising up against the King under the authority of the two houses must plainly condemn your disobedience and Insurrection afterwards against them And your rising up against the two Houses afterwards leaves your former Rebellion against the King without excuse And if this must be still called providence 't will certainly be in this That In your seizing at last upon the King God has brought you to condemn your selves and wash off with your own hands that fucus and paint of a supreme authority in the houses wherewith you did formerly colour your Rebellion against the King and shelter it from being seen and discover'd by the people But then this kind of Providence sure will be far enough from engaging you to that horrid perpetration which pretends to derive from it And if David who had he dispatched Saul out of the way had been instantly rightfull King as being the next undoubted Heir could yet find no such construction to be made possibly of that eminent providence wherein it pleased God to appear to him I can never sufficiently wonder at the quicksightedness of these men who from a permission onely to which they have waded in bloud and wrested from God by desperate impenitent provocations of getting the King into their hands should spy out at this vast distance an evident call to Power and Sovereignty in themselves by taking away his life and thereby an Obligation upon them for so doing David who had a right to the Crown dares not yet possess himself of it by this Act which these men look upon as so meritorious that the very committing of this Act must be rewarded upon them by God with Crowns and Sceptres and Kingdoms and create them a right out of their former Nothing Whereas no Robbery or Murther upon the high-way but has a much better title to Providence And I should hugely condemn the Laodicean temper of that Souldier who after this should be so cold a Christian as not to follow Providence in cutting the throat of every one that falls into his hands Good Sir Secret things belong unto the Lord but those that are revealed unto us and to our Children for ever And whatever God pleases to permit for our tryals we have yet a sure word of prophecy to guide us in our practice Whereto we should doe well to take heed says the Apostle as unto a light shining in a dark place And whereby David you see in the darkness and opportunity of the Cave was yet directed not to quench the light of Israel or stretch forth his hand against the Lord 's Anointed But this whole instance of David though extended to so great a length will easily be voided by you I perceive While granting a difference indeed between your selves and David and so in the ways of God's Providence towards you and him which I so much urge and so clearly demonstrate There is yet a third difference you will reply which I have said nothing of and wherein the advantage lies on your side to so great a degree as will fetch up the other scale and make all even And how contrary soever your actions were his in saving and yours in destroying Yet the vast difference of the subject matter whereon you wrought will easily reconcile them and allow them both to be Religious For to destroy a Tyrant may be an equal act of Piety as to honour and preserve a just King To pull down Babylon is as acceptable a service to God as to uphold the building of Jerusalem Tyrannus a Tyrant we must know therefore does Originally signifie a King the same with Rex or one in Sovereign Power without particularly specifying whether good or bad till Use the great Arbitratour of words and master of language had appropriated it onely to bad Kings whom we call Tyrants Yet with this latitude as comprehending under it Tyrannos titulo those who are tyrannical and unjust in the very obtaining of the Sovereignty as Invaders and Usurpers secondly Tyrannos exercitio those who though good and rightfull Possessours are yet tyrannical and exorbitant in the use of it And to this first part in the distinction viz. As it is taken for those who violently and injuriously Usurp a Sovereignty It holds for true and Orthodox that to destroy such may be an act of equal piety as to honour and preserve a just King And the reason is because indeed it is the same Vna eadémque manus vulnus opémque tulit And while I destroy the Usurper I do plainly in the same act save and defend the true King whose right it is But then Tyrant in the second part of the distinction and as it signifies without impeaching their right or title to the Crown such Sovereign Rulers as oppress the people that are under them there is yet a Noli me tangere upon them to every particular person though highly injured by them and favoured by God as David And a Nolite tangere Christos meos to what conjunctions and combinations of men soever Their persons are sacred and inviolable typified by the Holy Oil wherewith the Kings of Israel were consecrated and appropriated to God and thereby exempted from the common lot in that they were the Lord 's anointed Who can stretch forth his hand c. And though wicked and unjust they be though froward and ungentle we are yet to be subject to them says St. Peter And while they come in at the door by a fair and lawfull claim and not climb in at the windows by violence and forcible Usurpation which is perfectly the character of Thieves and Robbers though they should by this means gain the possession while they sit in Moses's seat by lawfull succession and descent from him we are still to obey and attend unto them though they bind heavy burthens upon our shoulders as our Saviour tells us of those Scribes and Pharisees and grievous to be born Where by the way if you please to take but this one note along with you 't will give some dispatch to the whole difference between us That 't is not the personal wickedness nor yet the cruel and severe impositions of our lawfull Governours that can give us the liberty therefore to refuse and reject them though they be as great Opposers of Christ and
an evident mark of God's Ordination whereby this Power is convey'd to a Person and how we shall know it God's Lordship and Sovreignty over us does originally arise from the right of a Creatour In that he is the cause and authour of our being he must necessarily have an absolute dominion over us who are produced and created by him It is he that hath made us and not we our selves says the Psalmist And then it follows regularly in the next words We are his people c. And as he was pleas'd not to produce all men as he did Adam solely and immediately by Himself though he had the residue of the Spirit as the Prophet speaks but to take in man as a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and Copartner with him in the production of the rest deriving them by Generation one from another He has hereby admitted man likewise into a partnership of his Sovreignty made him naturally a Sovreign over those who receive their being and production from him And thus Parents are petty gods in relation to their children And children have the obligation of creatures upon them in respect unto their Parents And this not onely to their next and immediate parents who beget them but upon the same Tenure for Causa causae est causa causati to their Parent 's Parents Avus Proavus Tritavus Grandfather Great-grandfather and so upwards Every one in the whole Category and Succession of them being a Subalternum genus That is to say a Power in respect of those under them but a Species and Subject still in respect of the Summum Genus the Supreme Parent from whom they flow and by whom they are sent And thus a Family becomes a Kingdom and the King or Pater patriae Father of the Countrey is the very Paterfamilias Master of the Family And as Noah if he were still alive would certainly be Rex Catholicus not in Title onely but in Truth the Catholick or Universal Monarch of the whole World as being the Father of all the Families and Kingdoms now in being So this Universal Monarchy must necessarily expire upon his death and become divided as it was between his three Sons Shem Ham and Japhet None of them being a Father and therefore not a King over the other but every one a Father and absolute in his own Family Shem the elder brother being still but a Brother and so though he had many privileges and priorities even a double portion above the rest as due by his Birthright Yet not necessarily or by the law of Nature to succeed into a paternal power over his brethren no more than he could be a natural Father to them And as here began the distinction of Kings and Kingdoms in these three Brethren and their Families So they all multiplying into many Sons and those Sons into many more who were all after their Fathers deaths as their Fathers before them had been absolute and Independent Monarchs over their respective children Every Family being still a several Kingdom it must needs be that in process of time among so many Kings and Kingdoms all absolute and independent from one another there could not but fall matter of continual and endless Controversie Every lesser Family oppress'd by the greater Every difference with a Neighbour being onely determinable by the sword and to be managed by a bloudy war For the avoiding of which great inconvenience manifestly arising from the multiplicity of Kings and Kingdoms we must suppose That either admonished by God or prompted by right Reason these several Fathers of Families so many of them as were adjoyn'd by any nearness of place and Kindred meeting together in one body and others in another and so of the rest did give up this their absolute power which they had severally before over their own Families into the hands of some one person incorporating themselves and their Families into his Family adopting themselves his children and by uniting their several paternal powers in him alone did thereby make and acknowledge him the common Father of them all And that not personally onely or with limitation to his particular self For then at his death they must have return'd to the same inconveniences as before Which by the greater increase of Families would then become much greater and which therefore they were concern'd the rather and with greater diligence to prevent but to his Heirs after him So making his Family to be a Family of Fathers in their several generations to them and their Families for ever And that this is indeed the true original of Kings and Monarchs all particular paternal powers being really transferr'd and united in them is very evident as Mr. Diggs observes Because else we should be bound to obey our Fathers commands before those of the Kings For divine precept stands in full force Honour thy Father c. Which being as St. Paul says the first commandment with promise and the first in the second Table does certainly in its own weight and obligation and so ought to do in our value and observance out-strip all other after Commandments of the same Nature with it or relating to Man And were not therefore to be set lower in the least by honouring and obeying the King before our Father if it were not certain that the King is more our Father than our Father that does beget us Tam pater nemo est in terris No man is so much our Father as the King And to whom therefore the honour enjoyn'd us towards our Father does most eminently and in the first place upon that very account belong But if this derivation of Kingly Power should not become perhaps so plain and intelligible to ordinary apprehensions as too far removed out of their sight I shall endeavour in a new draught to bring it nearer and by clear and evident instances to facilitate the understanding of it God doth impower a Person or call and ordain him to power by two manner of ways Either mediately or immediately Immediately and by himself so he called Aaron to the Priesthood Saul and after him David to the Kingdom mediately or by right from these as Eleazar and his Sons after him succeeded to Aaron So Solomon and his Sons after him succeeded David in the Kingdom Though all these may be rather said to be immediately call'd by God in as much as in the first investiture and conferring authority on Aaron and David the promise and so the Power was made to them and their seeds for ever Which yet while it was immediately done by God was never so immediately done by him as not to take in the Ministery of men for the doing of it even some known authentick Prophet to convey this message to call and consecrate the person to this authority Thus Moses by God's appointment settles the Priesthood upon Aaron and Samuel the Kingdom upon David And whoever will derive from this claim even this immediate call from God must not pretend I know not