Selected quad for the lemma: nature_n
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A63900
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An argument in defence of the hospitaller of St. Thomas Southwark and of his fellow-servants and friends in the same house
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Turner, John, b. 1649 or 50.
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1689
(1689)
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Wing T3300; ESTC R9444
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36,427
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31
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matchless a worthy and if this man should happen to be the same with the t'other I doubt me he hath not yet repented of his Treason for this is treason too it is treason against humane Society which such principles and such practices would certainly destroy and this is the very foundation of Treason against Princes whose Persons are so Sacred above all other men not so much upon their own private account as for the sake of the publique which is highly concern'd interested in their safety and suffers in all the injuries they receive and thus much may suffice for the Character of Hugonides and his Freind whom I would not have treated at so rough a rate but that they have turn'd raillery into a pertinent thing and made it so absolutely necessary for me to expose them that it may appear at least there is no merit of congruity betwixt my small preferment and them What hath been said hitherto hath been upon occasion of the Stating of the Case as it was represented to Three worthy Gentlemen learned in the Law in order to obtaining their Opinions upon it I come now very briefly to say something with relation to the Opinions themselves by all which it is agreed that the ordinary Power of Visitation and inspection into the affairs and Officers of this House is in the Governors for the time being that is to say First in the Lord Mayor and Court of Aldermen and Secondly those other Gentlemen and Citizens that are deputed by them or allowed by their permission to manage and Transact the Hospitall Affairs and that the respective Officers belonging to it are not Charter Officers that have a fixt Interest and a setled right but only Servants at pleasure receiving wages for their work and to be dismist at discretion when the Governors think fit though behaving themselves well in their severall Employments they may be said to have an Equitable right and that it would be an Hardship in the Governors which they could not justify to themselves to turn them off against their wills in such Circumstances as these but however these Opinions do at least say thus much for us that the Persons claiming against us have no Legall right and that there is no necessary Connexion betwixt the Regulation of the Hospitall and the Restitution of the Charter so that Mr Hughes is very much out of the way when he insists so unskillfully upon a Legall right and proves himself to be as bad a Lawyer as he is a Divine or a man. But yet I confess there is one thing in the opinion of that great and Excellent Person Mr Sergeant Pemberion which I cannot perfectly assent to though I should not presume to own a difference in matters of this nature from a Person so profoundly Learned in his Profession but that the Success of our cause does in some measure depend upon it he is pleased to say that upon the Restitution of the Charter and the avoidance of that Commission that supply'd its place there were no Governors left either old or new but that it was perfectly at the discretion of the Court of Aldermen to regulate and order all those matters as they pleased but in an humble Opposition to this I presume to offer that the King being at all times vested with a Power of Visiting the Hospitalls and of making from time to time such Regulations in them as to his Princely Wisdom shall seem most meet and Expedient though the Commission be dissolved yet the Regall Power and Authority still remains and what a King hath done by vertue of his Legall and rightfull Power always inherent and vested in his Person that nothing less them a King can destroy so that those new Governors being a Constitutive and Essentiall part of this very Regulation they must stand Independent from the Court of Aldermen till the King declare them to have nothing to do in this House and the old ones that were Ejected whether Officers or Governors cannot be readmitted without the Kings consent the Kings Authority and the Validity of it in all those Acts to which it extends it self being always the same though indifferent Persons that are invested with it so that in all the Legall Jurisdictions of a King it is ille aperit nemo claudit he openeth and no man shuts he shuts and no man opens nothing but a King can dissolve those Obligations or annull those Rights which a Lawfull King hath Establisht And indeed it were a great incongruity in the King very unbecoming either his wisdom or greatness and a great diminution to his power if he should erect and constitute a Commission to regulate abuses in such things as do naturally and legally belong to his visitation and inspection and yet when the Commission was disolved the regulation should cease which would be to as little purpose as if no such regulation had ever been made only it would reflect a disparagement upon the King as weak and inconsiderable and pretending to more power then really he had for that regulation which is actually dissolved after the dissolution of that Commission by which it was made must needs have been unjust and unlawfull before it for lawfull and just things will-endure Nay I appeal to all the world what confusion it would introduce into the affairs of the City if all the acts of the Commissioners for the space of five years together should by the expiration or dissolution of the Commission be rendered null and void though yet upon supposition that the Charter could not be voided which I do not concern my self whether it could or no the Commission was so far illegall if we look down to it's root though its necessity may perhaps plead something in its excuse as I have hinted before but as for that branch of the Commission which concerned the Hospitalls it was as I have shewn strictly legall and therefore all those acts which pass'd under and from it of which the election of Governours and Officers were two must need be legall and consequently valid No Mr. Hughes do not please and flatter your little self with vain imaginations the regulation is as valid as the first authority from whence it sprang and that is the Kings though the Commission that managed and ordered that whole matter be now actually dissolved and I think I have given so very good reason for it that even your own impudence that face of yours which is your unquestionable Property and is peculiar to your self cannot without some small discolouring some streaks and Essays towards the Modesty of a blush oppose it any longer But yet I grant that though the Governors do manifestly hold by a Superior Tenure to any that the Court of Aldermen can give them yet the Charter being restored the Ordinary Visitation and Inspection of the Hospitall returns together with it and the Aldermen in the Course of things and in the Right and Power of Administration being Superior to
refuge of the Infirm and Weak Mr Rustat whose Exemplary bounty and Munificence founded those Scholarships that are called by his name in the Florishing Society of Jesus Colledge in Cambridge reserved to himself during his own life time the Approbation of such as should be chosen into them and it would have been very hard to deny him though he had not claimed it a Prerogative so naturall and so just as this much more would this have been ungratefull and disloyall in Subjects to their King during the whole Reign of Edward the 6th after the Foundation and Endowment of this House to deny him a right of Enquiring from one time to another into the management of so great a trust though no reservation in his Charter had been made which reservation must for that reason more especially respect his Successors then himself who had an undoubted and unquestionable right of Inspecting and inquiring into that Royall Charity which was so strictly and so immediately his own it was I say a reservation to his Successors rather then to him which gives them a right of Law besides a right of Congruity which they will always have in the Donations of their Predecessors to see that their Piety and Charity be not abused to examine or inquire into the management of this Trust and to confirm or alter what is already Establisht by a Subordinate Power as to their Princely Wisdom shall seem meet and when Mr Hughes or any of his Friends can clear themselves handsomely of this one consideration which stabs his whole claim and goes to the heart of his cause then I will yield to him without any more ado though I have several other material things to suggest in bar to his pretences which are so unsound and rotten in every Point and Circumstance that no man ever appeared to lay his claim to any thing with greater disadvantage then Mr Hughes hath done For first it is notorious that when he was first admitted into this place and for about three years after he never was Episcopally ordained as the Constitutions of the Church of England and the severall Acts of Uniformity but more especially that which is called the Bartholomew Act do unavoidably require nothing of that Act being ever yet repealed that I know of unless it be that Clause which concerned the Solemn League and Covenant which was intended to be only a Temporary thing and was to expire of it self after a certain term of years which is now long since Elapsed He says he was chosen into this House by Fourscore Governors and to do him a kindness it shall be if he pleaseth four thousand For let them be never so many it was in it self a void Act For they could not chuse a Non-Conformist to be Chaplain here to eat at the Kings cost in the Kings House who is the Protector and Guardian of the Laws and to be maintain'd by way of Salary under the Notion of an Ecclesiasticall Person out of the Publick Revenues of the State as if Non-Conformity were to be encouraged out of the Publick Revenue at the same time when it was so severely and expressly forbidden by the Statute Laws of the Kingdom several times reiterated and repeated I do not speak this out of any want of Tenderness to a Religious dissent For God Forbid but every man should Act according to his Conscience neither did I ever oppose any dissenting Party so as to think them in Justice punishable for their dissent out of any other Principle then what was meerly Political for the Preservation of the Publick Peace which is the certain and undoubted measure upon which the Acts of Parliament in that behalf have proceeded and if I have any where said any thing with heat or with contempt of Separatists and Dissenters out of too much precipitance in writing or out of the rashness and inadvertency which is incident to Youth yet it was always my Principle that all Mankind by nature are Endowed with all that Liberty of Action of Opinion and Enjoyment which is consistent with private peace and rest on with the Safety and Tranquillity of the Publique which in a Society or body Politique is that which is most especially to be regarded and that the Legall restraints are only Artificial things superinduced by necessity experience and length of time to promote the advantage of a Nation by making provision for its Peace Ornament Plenty and Protection or to prevent its ruine by restraining and curbing those interferring passions that have a Naturall Tendency to so bad an End No man can complain of me that ever I Persecuted him for his Conscience sake but some that have been actually under the Hatches of the Law I have endeavoured to relieve and bring off as well as I could as the Persons if they be living whose names I have now forgot may remember I never pronounced an Excommnication in my life and am naturally very tender in a matter of such dreadfull consequence as that is but an Absolution from it I have with great Chearfullness and Alacrity recited there is nothing in the whole world that hath afforded me greater trouble and dissatisfaction of mind then to see the Frailty Folly and perverseness of humane nature to be such that we must needs be Falling out and Squabbling about opinions which may be United in Charity though never so opposite or distant in themselves and which are by no means incompetible or inconsistent with our common happiness and Salvation but yet I have always been and I am still in my own thoughts a profest Enemy to an unlimited Toleration though the Naturall tenderness and compassion of my Temper to which even Justice hath a Cruell and Frightfull appearance will never suffer me to vex my Neighbour upon a Religious account my reason why I am against it is because long experience hath Taught and inculcated a Lamentable truth that men will always be Embroiling the Peace of their Country upon Religious pretences that there is a mixture of passion a leaven of design a secret root of Ambition or Revenge that frequently lies hid under a sanctify'd appearance and that it is not so much Salvation in the other World or truth in this as power that is aimed at and contended for and if these inconveniences could any way be prevented without the rigours and severities of humane Laws I for my part should think it the blackest Tyranny in the World that the Liberty of thought and of opinion or the freedom of a pleasant and diverting Conversation that ought in reason to be the result of such differences as these by mens comparing their Sentiments together which are the first most Naturall most Essentiall and deeply rooted Liberties of mankind so long as they keep within the bounds of modesty and Friendship should be Fettered and Entangled by positive Constitutions which is the true Spirit and Mystery of the Papacy it self and is the greatest enemy that can be to that curious