to God's Glory and the worst of Man's Actions though all alike under the common Providence of God But a little further I desire his Patience to go along with me A King killed to day and the Regicide by his party becomes King in Fact and in Power to morrow then to morrow he obeys him with all Attributes of God's greatness Will Power Goodness and if him another on the next day then him too and so on still It is known that after it began in Nero how many Emperors came upon the stage of the World in a short space killing and dispatching the present gave being to the latter Now where will he define or place his Providence or bound Man's acting Certainly if at all in the first place for many reasons as the first loose or progression to Wickedness is the true cause of all the following and because there is a natural stay in the first which loosed the like is not found in the following The truth is it is a foolish thing to ty up Man's reason more in one thing than in another for if he argues things greater or higher to him he argues still but to his reason In the next he goes higher and like a Stone falling the nearer the Center the greater its force so he as he proceeds farther grows fiercer about the King 's being judged to death by his People and he extenuates the Fact by the formality of it I should wrong him not to give it him in his own words Object I must needs add that every wise man sees that the case it self much differs from the Papists If the Body of a Common-wealth or those that have part in the Legislative Power and so in the Supremacy should unwillingly be engaged in a War with the Prince and after many years blood and desolations judicially take away his life as guilty of all this Blood and not to be trusted any more with Government And all this do not as private men but as the remaining Soveraign Power and say they do it according to Laws undoubtedly this case doth very much differ from the Powder-Plot or Papists murdering of Kings and teaching that it is lawfull for a private hand to do it if he be but an Heretick or but deposed yea or excommunicated by the Pope Answ Mine thorow-out will give a larger consideration upon the whole But to his particulars as they pass from him First he saith have part in the Legislative Power and so in the Supremacy wherein he confounds them both together and makes it but one and the same To have part in the Legislative Power as to the altering of Laws or any other thing wherein it is exercised implies a right in the People as to those things and in the Nature of it a Negative Right That is that it could not be done without their consents and this Negative Right gives them not a farther Right Object His next is and judicially take away his life Answ The King 's own words at that hard time with him when they sate over him as his Judges are most worthy as from himself to be remembred He told them how far his case was their King from being judged by them when as all judicature was derived from him to them And certainly this alone of the King 's carryes Argument enough in it against all judging or condemning of King's or Supreams for no Power can create a Power against it self and nothing in nature can go higher than its first Cause A Power derived out of the King cannot be understood to be against the King He goes on to criminate the King whether his sense or supposition I know not Object As guilty of all that Blood Answ The King's unhappiness was to be made guilty because he was not able to defend himself And so shall every Prince be that is overcome by his Subjects they must be guilty to be destroyed Tyrants Wickedness do but prepare a guilt for the cruelties they mean to act It was the Kings own saying That he had not one foot of Land in his own Kingdom but what his Army stood upon It was not possible to be a more necessitated War than the King 's for all the World knows it was destiny upon him never persons so obdurate as to take no conditions never could find any Medium betwixt destroying their Soveraign and their own desperateness And the King's Interest wholly defensive not only for himself but for his Kingdoms and that made him say upon his death which seals all truths that he dyed his Kingdom 's and his People's Martyr It were easy to go upon demonstrative proofs in this but it would involve the whole Cause which we are to take in its parts Object And not any more to be trusted with Government Answ This is the reason in the Eye of the Law which sees to the end in the first act that all attempts to bring a King under any Power of his People are the same as to destroy him And this was resolved in the Case of the Earl of Essex he would seize upon the Court Camden's Annals p. 547 548. take the Queen into his Power not otherwise harm her remove from her evil Counsellors but honour her Person Now this was all adjudged high Treason in every circumstance of it because all depriving of a Soveraign Prince of his Power is the same as to destroy him Essex himself said before his death that the Queen and he both could not live and others the most eminent of his party acknowledged that though it were not their design to destroy the Queen yet it would have been the necessity of their proceeding if they had prevailed so as the effects of Rebellion Mr. Baxteâ— makes his Arguments Before I put an end to these Papers I shall resume again his words No more to be trusted with Government to make inquiry into the Rights of Kings and their Original to find their first Cause and to judge of their extent and terminations But at present to his next Object And all this they do that is take away the King's life not as private men but the remaining Soveraign Power and say they do it according to Laws Answ Mr. Baxter's Objective words without any proving brings every thing to a question as this hath two very great falshoods and high presumptions in it The one a Soveraignty in the Parliament the other a lawfulness of killing the King For the first which is made the conveyance to the latter to erect so high a wickedness upon a Parliamentary Supremacy to make them an expedient to kill their King is no more true than that there were two Kings in England two Suns in the Firmament of Government two Centers in a Circle two Infinites or any Impossibility that can be imagined But I shall have occasion to treat the Argument of the King 's sole Soveraignty in divers passages onely at present to it the Parliament is but a borrowed light all derived out
the highest Judge of the safety or danger of the Re-publick and that it is Treason against the Common-wealth and as Politicians say against the Majestas realis to rise against them Answ Mr. Baxter hath of this in several places the Parliament's Supremacy it is his Goliath I shall answer generally to it at once Now the Arguments may be many I will make it but a Passage not a serious Debate and give but hints of truths that may be enlarged The first is that I am sure though I was not of that time that Kings were when Parliaments were not and then must be granted absolute the other not in being We cannot suppose here in England any time of Government without Kings and the Kings themselvs thought it best to convene the People to draw thereby aids of the Publick by publick consent and likewise to have all Counsels and all Grievances in common to be common in helps and means which is strongest and peradventure to ballance the Loâ—ds by this popular Power Whatsoever the ends were in it or the use to be made of it or accidents that grew out of it it shews it was a Creature mearly of the King's Will and creating and therefore cannot be intended but to act under him and to his help as the end of its Being So being called by the King in this sense they bear in them the Peoples Rights whatsoever was left in the People to be disposed of by their own consent Their Power therefore must hold proportion with that that is only in the quality of the People as to complain of Grievances and petition Redresses to give their private to the Publick and to consent to alter Fundamentals as there shall be cause all which are the natural Rights of the People and common consent is required to them Now this does not reach at all to Mr. Baxter's sense of sharing with the King in Supremacy and Power and right of governing nothing at all of it All Parliament rights have their station below governing it is by accident when they meddle with the Government as about the causes that require their help And all great and outward relations and inward may be Objects of this great Body of the People as their help is required but this with that caution as the King puts them on and takes them off So jealous a thing is Soveraignty it self And it is a nice distinction to make them Judges of the necessity and not to judge of the cause of the necessity and therefore involve themselvs sometimes in it too far and the retreats have been difficult No doubt this must needs be a strange great considerable Power in the consequence of it that which all the rest moves by and is the matter or means of the Government But this does not alter the Nature of it It is a most noble Constitution because it begets treatment betwixt Prince and People and there is a correspondency betwixt the giving of the one and the retribution of the other but when either make too much use of their Power it destroys the order and the inconvenience is so intolerable to the Nation as they are brought again to it and must correspond Now nothing preservs so much as when things keep to their Natures The good of Parliaments does consist within their own rights and not to enter into the King's for then it breaks the Parliament or the Parliament breaks the Government To return to the nature of the Objection of co-ordinate Power of Parliaments The Parliament is a Creation that comes out of the King's Will and Power nothing of Power to beget it self and therefore cannot be understood to serve to another end against that which was its cause and which it self had absolute Being without it Never to this day they have Power to their own Being but at the King's Will a meer Entity first in the King's Will before it can have any in them so as they are meerly Creatures having their Creation from another's Will and so to determine them after they are in being which shews the most absolute depending on another Power that possibly can be Hence rationally and consequently of this it must be that the end is of the Agent and Author and not to be their own end that did not nor could not move to their own Being so as meerly it follows A Parliament is the King's business because it flows out of his Will And some Acts have been made by consent of Kings for certainty of Parliaments but have not bound Kings for we see they have been discontinued many years together So certain it is that Regal Right cannot be restrained Now the King 's good and the People's are so necessarily conjoyned as it cannot be supposed they can serve the King but it must conserve the Kingdom and all the People And hence flows all publick considerations and conclusions the whole Interest of the Nation resolves it self into it and all the Powers submit to it because all parties are in it by convention or representation and the King can make lawful whatsoever they can consent to But without the King they are a meer inanimate Body and can act nothing they are as the Womb or Matrix the King is the generative Masculine part that gives life and production and actuates and forms their conceptions And the difference not rightly conceived begets the mistake confounding their Power with that of ordinary standing Courts which act by the King's Power invested in them which he cannot with-draw or deny to and this of Parliaments which is extraordinary and by the King's consent And then too their work is about the generality not to do with the ordinary proceedings of Law proper to other Courts but only the abuse of them The Author of the History of Independency affirms pag. 35. History of Independency 35. that the judicial Power of the House of Lords is by the King 's special Authority his Argument upon it is The King makes them Admiministrators and interpreters of his Laws but he never trusts any but himself with the Power of pardoning and dispensing with the rigour of the Law in Criminal cases And though the Lord Keeper is Speaker of the Lord's House of course yet he is no Member of the Lord's House virtute Officii The Judges are not Members but Assistants only so that no man in the House of Peers as he is simply a Peer is trusted by the King either by dispensation of Law or Equity When a Peer of Parliament or any man else is tryed before the Lords in Parliament criminally he cannot be tried by his Peers only because in acts of Judicature there must be a Judge Superior who must have his Inferiors ministerial to him Therefore in the Trial of the Earl of Strafford as in all other Trials upon Life and Death in the Lord's House the King grants his Commission to a Lord High Steward to sit as Judge and the rest of the Lords are but in
as madness it self yet I think that God would take it ill that we should mock him to set up a King to Govern and then to reserve a Power to destroy him against his Word and meaning for the very power of Governing invests him with all these rights of protection vertually all these Attributes fall to him by his actual governing It is a principle in nature that Supremacy attracts all right to it and all perfection to be King and not perfect is impossible And this I will say at last of the King himself which I think his very enemies and destroyers cannot deny that never any Prince fell by his people that had fewer faults and more vertues Now at last my exception to Mr. Baxter is that he personates the Protestants so as to destroy them and their Religion There is no other way of keeping the guilt and imputation of that horrid accursed act from the Religion but by a total condemnation of it We say and justly that it was an act that transcends all that ever was worse and more infernal and execrable then any thing else the Pope or man can do Now Mr. Baxter out of his particular makes it the Protestant interest that it be not so evil as the wickedness under the Religion of Papists and so puts it upon the Protestants account of whatsoever nature it be and makes it their interest to extenuate the evil of it which is a meer involving them and their cause into it and the most unjust in the World for Is a Religion to answer for what wickedness men do in it I mean being of it or professing it But thus he loves to hale all Interests after him to follow his sense Let him himself be in love with it extenuate it find Jesuitical abstracted quintessential notions to dissolve all Allegiance upon Terms let him take it to himself and not make it more general then his own party Having done with this sad subject we will see him in his next whither he will lead us Object It is a grievous Case that the Senate or Body of a Nation should think themselvs necessitated to defend themselvs and the Church and State against their Prince or any that act by his Commands it will strongly tempt them to think that the end is to be preferred before the means and it ceaseth to be a means which is against or destructive to the end Answ The poor unfortunate King that could never by any possible compliance and means begg off his own and his Kingdoms ruine of them was wont to tell them when they used the great Argument of necessity for all violent actions that they were necessities of their own making Because their ends were exorbitant and such as the Laws would not bear they must proportion the means which drew on the necessities Now to his preferring the end before the means a principle he is fallen upon and the most dangerous one of the World for by this he may decline all Truth and Justice to go the next way over to his ends and yet a very strong one that the end is that for which the means is there is no use or consideration of the means but to the end By this ground he hath laid flat all Honesty Truth Goodness whatsoever for it may be it doth not suit to the end And hence it was that their ends being Reformation as they call our Deformation and Destruction it could not be done by a lesse means I do but mind him of this his party having made so much use of it The truth is if men would ty themselvs to the Justice of the means they could never attain to unjust ends Object It is essentiall to governing Power to be for common good Answ No doubt but it is as appears by their destroying the Government and we never had any good since But without taking this advantage I will give him a further Answer from the nature of Government and every other thing we call good that is good in the generality not exact good in every action of it Object It is no Authority which is used against common good Answ Then there is no Authority in the World for there is no Authority or Magistracy but at some time or other is used against it He multiplies forward still Object It would tempt them also to think that God never gave Power to any against himself or above his Laws or against the end of Government Answ He should prove here that God gave them a Right of destroying both the King and the Government for that is the Case For he confesseth the War raised by themselvs against delinquent Subjects But to answer to this as he intends it God doth some times give evil Governours and doth he not likewise give them Power God himself fore-spake in Saul and then concluded the People in these words then that is when they were oppressed by their King 1 Sam. 8.18 Grotius de jure Belli 81. shall they cry out that is to say seek help of God Quia scilicet humana remedia nulla extarent Grotius exposition of it call to God for help that is there was no means of resistance to be used on their part His next Object A Senate or the Body of a Nation will be apt to think themselvs fit to discern when the Publick safety is dangerously assaulted and will hardly be brought to trust any one to be the finall Judge of their necessity as thinking such a publick necessity proves it self and needs no Judge but sense and reason to discern it Answ Suppose there had been no Parliament this Argument would have served for the Body of the People to rise up and take away the King's Power as not fit to judge of the necessity or to be trusted with the Publick safety It was the King's Act to call a Parliament and 't was his and our ruine that he put himself upon it Having hitherto kept equal pace with him in these his severall distinct heads give me leave in general to censure of them that is that in them he hath sown the seeds of all the Rebellions in the World Let them be taken as truths abstractedly without their alloy or composition as so the very Elements would destroy us no Government can stand Do we not as often as we err in any thing employ the means against the end and shall we as often fall out with our selvs These abstracted Considerations cannot consist with the being of Man which is not certain in any thing but subject to error and as often as ever a King errs so often by his Argument the means is against the end and loseth the essence of a governing Power So as by Mr. Baxter's Learning there can never want matter for Rebellion In the next he raiseth his Parliament as an out-work to affront and batter Monarchy in these words Object And if they also think that the fundamentall Constitution of the Government doth make the Senate
the nature of Jurors so that it is the King's Commission that authorizeth and distinguisheth them When a Writ of Error issueth out of the Chancery to the House of Peerâ— they derive their Authority meerly from that Writ For the three Reasons aforesaid the House of Peers is no Court of Judicature at all without the King 's special Authority granted to them either by his Writ or his Commission As for the House of Commons they never pretended to any Power of Judicature and have not so much Authority as to administer an Oath Thus far his But the Argument is not at all pertinent as to the House of Lords whom they have expelled and all Form of Parliament or Callings but in the People their ground is onely upon a House of Commons as the People's Representatives Nevertheless we take the whole and give truly the Nature of a Parliament for the perfectest way of rejecting Falshood is by delineating the true Form It is not imaginable for a King to govern without the assistance and assent of the Peers for Government cannot stand alone for as they are ever a party where any King is the Question is only of the Commons Prin's plea for Lords pag. 182. which is an Adjunct and therefore the Searchers into Antiquity take upon them to antedate them and derive them but as an Accident to the Government in England But to take it in the whole it being a truly poised Government and mixed Interest hath left so great a share in the People as servs to treat their King 's with and be at all times able to gain conditions And God forbid any Power should deny to the People's good it can be no end of Government and therefore he is not single or alone but hath common consent in the great Interests of the Nation changing or making Laws or making impositions He must have common consent to this and this draws all the rest to it since hardly any thing can move but by these two Interests and this is the ballance of the Government to make it hang equal betwixt Prince and People And the evils and mischief that sometimes redounds is from the abuse of it not from the Nature of it being the best composition of Government in the World and the People freer under it than in any Common-wealth Government which they call free Government the Reason is a Secret till looked into Physically that is this best of all to be seen in our late long odious Parliament there all the People's Liberties were swallowed up the People uncreatured as it were no defensive all in the Parliament when as in the King and Parliament the People have a direct party and a defensive as there shall be cause against any deprivation of their Rights There are some Signals of Kingly absolute Right which need but naming as the King 's Adviseray to Bills which he will not pass which was ever effectual as to a total condemnation So as here was no Power out of the King all reduced to him in his last Power of denying and likewise of pardoning And this needs not plead any right for it but right of Nature in reason of Government else without such a Power the King might be reduced to nothing And a King never falls or loseth his Power but he is lost in himself too He does not retain Kingly Government but on condition to perish with it And therefore all Laws are styled of Grace and petitioned for because the People till they are passed the Royal assent have but a Right in Reason to them not in Law only from the Supream Law of Salus Populi which is the comprehensive of all Laws The common mistake is because the King cannot do such and such things without the Parliament Ergo The Parliament governs the King Now as to this Many may be said to govern me so as to restrain me that I cannot go beyond my own Power and yet this no active governing Power over another this is the easiest thing to conception that can come into imagination Is there not where any Right is which we call property a power of denying And this is all the absolute Parliamentary power considered dividedly from the King and this vast inconsequence containing all the means almost to be King unless the King would break throw it which is the hardest task any King can go about yet nothing of the Nature of governing power no agency or efficiency in it by it self but only a meer Negative Because I am engaged in this consideration I will resort back to the state of the Question of a Parliament to be the highest Judge of the safety or danger of the Republick The Answer is direct that the King is the sole Judge of the safety or danger of the Re-publick as King he is only trusted and there cannot be two such judging powers for then there can be no determination when they stand in competition Therefore all the Powers in the Kingdom act subordinately to the King and not against or athwart the King's Power for that were for a Being to destroy it self The distinction lies in this that they have nothing to do with the King's Power but the People's Rights which they dispose of by the King's consent and not absolutely at all out of themselvs In this they may oppose the King's desire that is they have a Negative Power not to be compelled or the People to be put out of possession without them But where the disagreement is they are to acquiesce and so nothing comes of it and the King fails of his end this is the height of their power Their Bills which they are free to make contain in them Grievances to be reformed which implies complaint and consent whatsoever the King cannot do by his quality singly as King he doth by consent of the People and that is the Character of a Parliament the People for it directly represents the Universality the People and hath directly and truly no power but what is nationally and naturally the People's so as look upon that you find this and no difference at all in it hence consenting and denying giving aiding being natural properties of Rights are left to them as the People in them And this though great as to all the means of governing it doth not come near it so vast a difference is betwixt being free in mine own and having Power over anothers as no reason needs to be given of it Nevertheless the King as the common Interest is not to be supposed deficient of the Publick means that were unnatural therefore as to Government it self all means are lawful nor any thing so concerning to the People as to keep the temperament for when they destroy that they lose the means to their own good I might leave it here in its causes but I shall say something by way of President Queen Elizabeth the greatest Courter of her People and yet the best Governour would lose nothing of her
make a breathing space and a stop here or being like getting to some heighth of ground look about us certainly it shews that no Supremacy is pretended to but utterly disclaimed and all resolving determining or the last power in business of Government and no persons can come lower or assert more extreamly and exemplarly against themselves in any such point of Right So as we see plainly Governing Power is all with the King and the question comes to be only about propounding proposing discoursing upon those high points of Regal power in Government not being specially required to it which Kings think comes too near their skirts like David cutting off a lap of King Saul's Garment to shew only that he was in his power so Kings think the one cannot be done or assumed that is entering into or assuming out of self Authority to treat of the very essentialls about Government or the great weighty occasions that refer to it but like the cutting off of the lap of the Garment begets a power over the person and this was the very stone of difference in this Parliament so as we see to how neer a point it is reduced a little space or difference one would think betwixt proposing only without power of resolving and not proposing now there is nothing more satisfactory then the Kings own answer to them about this for no person could speak his business so well as himself and this very particular of the passage it is a School of Learning Now because I will not altogether write out of another nor be tedious I omit it It is no matter let it be amongst arcana imperii not to bring all into vulgar light else the reasons might be abstracted why Parliaments are not of themselves to assume to treat of the points proper to the King in Government I shall leave this and only excuse my self in it being far too high for me that I only do it in the defensive to regal Right which is higher and to the peoples right which does not consist in confusion of Government but in the certainty of it Having done with this high consideration I shall take notice of his dangerous inserted words of Majestas Realis the self same as condemned in the Spencers in Ed. 2. his time and likewise in the following Parliaments of that Age for the most destructive design against the persons and safety of Kings that ever was imagined A dividing of the Kings person and his end of Governing they would have the Majesty to consist in the end and so diviseable from the person and so the King might be deposed and destroyed and yet the Majesty whole What will not mans brain hatch when he is disposed to be wicked This was new forged brought out of the Mint again and begot the Notion of Treason against the Common-Wealth and served to make the King a Traytor I desire his patience to read Sir Edward Cook â—o 7. Rep. â—lv Case 7. Report Calvins Case there he will tell him that all Allegiance is tyed and refers to the person of the King that the whole consistency of Majesty and Kingship must be in a person in being not to hang in the Ayre as an accident without his subject all Relation all Attributes all Majesty are but rayes from that body dividedly from the King can be no consideration at all of Treason or Majesty this Serpenti e way of creeping betwixt the Kings person and his Authority was a device to destroy him Object When the Legislative Power and highest judicial Power is by the constitution of the Government divided between the Prince and the Senate and so the Soveraignty divided many will be ready to think with Grotius de jure belli Lib. 1.13 pag. 91. That the Prince invading the Senate's Right may justly be resisted and may lose his Right quod locum saith Grotius habere censeo etiam si dictum sit belli potestatem penes Regem fore id enim de bello externo intelligendum est cum alioqui quisquis imperii summi partem habeat non potest non jus habere eam partem tuendi quod ubi fit potest Rex etiam suam imperii partem belli jure amittere Answ These parties will still stumble at the same stone that is because of the Legislative power in some sort or manner or form of it in the Parliament therefore the Supremacy which does not follow for the Supremacy is the sole Governing Power and Government is a constant being the other but at times and by occasion so as no proportion at all is betwixt a constant governing Power and an occasional Power and when they are demanded but about their own Rights it being planted in Nature that where Right is there is a power of denying and a power of giving yielding and consenting and this is the Parliamentary power properly and per se all which arises out of the Rights and property of the People meerly Now these persons will not discern the difference betwixt the power of consenting which must needs be likewise a power of denying and active efficient power which is in Government it self and is alwayes constant and universal It has the properties as the Soul in the Animal cannot have parts in it and dividedness or to discontinue Now they introduce this their objection with a When when it is so that is the Soveraignty divided they should prove where it is so I think not in nature of two Soveraign Powers in one Government certainly this is no Government but distinct Governments and how it can refer to one people governed requires the inquisition for when they stand upon terms of difference then the Government presently is in the state of War and none to reconcile it being equal divided Powers Rights may lye so but Governing Power cannot lye so the distance is the same as betwixt two Forreign States or Princes who may reconcile and accommodate their reciprocal good so long as they can accord upon it as well as these several distinct Powers in one body and in this either party upon the difference betakes himself to his defensive and then the Government ceases to be so as it is not at all consistent with the nature of Government but of Governments in respect the one of the other All Governments are either Monarchial Governments or mixed Governments now in Monarchical Government first it supposes absoluteness of Supremacy in the Monarch or Prince and then it cannot suppose it likewise in any other for then the Government should be a Monster of two heads and besides so cannot act the Powers in counterpoise being equal and so it is no Power but a Power of destroying it self as equal contraries when they meet are destructive to the matter that is the subject of them Peradventure some instances may be found of some that have been called Kings and have been but head Members of Common-wealths and such their safety and being is to act subordinately to the
King and Parliament and all their Vows and Protestations but as so many charms only to destroy the King because by other means they could not delude the people and now he confesses it concludes and consents to the reason of it that an exasperated King is never to be trusted again with his power over those that subdued him by this he destroyes his Covenant his Cause and the whole onely that served then and this now To drive this further because Mr. Baxter declares himself so in it as he can have no retreat out of it First fight their King subdue him be Victorious upon him make him Captive then kill him according to the Kings own sense and saying when he was in that condition That there were but few steps betwixt the Prisons and the Graves of Princes Now Mr. Baxter makes it his very Argument for the death of the King and so involves his whole Cause and Party in it has destroyed all difference and distinction and makes the death of the King natural and consequential to the first of warring upon him We see here how naturally falshoods betray themselves out of their own Arguments I shall not pass by the insolency and impropriety of his saying Conquered the King If Mr. Baxter were skilled in the Laws of England which is out of his Element he would know that there can be no such thing as a Conquest of Subjects over their King it is desertion or Treason not Conquest If he consult but nature it will tell him that that which is the proper strength existency and being of any thing cannot be said to conquer it no more then any thing can be said to conquer it self the being ceases to be if the essentiall do but divide from it Cook 3. Inst p. 12. Nay the voice and reason of our Laws would never call them Enemies but Traytors Enemies implyes a kind of equalls He sayes Object It was the Judgment of the Parliament upon the division Answ Upon their division their dividing from the King their Judgment was nothing but as private persons or wicked enemies all Subordination depends so upon its first Cause as dividing from that the beeing ceases to be In the next you shall observe Mr. Baxter over-rule Scripture to his own sense as he hath dealt in Politicks Object And that those that did resist the Higher Powers set over them by God are guilty of the damnation of resisters Answ This of Higher Powers here in Mr. Baxters meaning is of those that raised the War against the King that they were the Higher Powers not to be resisted Now I have not met with a greater violation of Scripture then this to make it a meer contrary to its self and destructive to the end it serves to not only indirectly but oppositely This Scripture proceeds from the Spirit of God directly for preservation of Kings and Mr. Baxter applyes it to the Kings destroyers makeing them the meer object of it in the act of destroying the King I have driven it thus home to fix it upon observation what a strange degree of falsifying and abusing Scripture in it and the horridness of the example and consequence of falsifying grounds and rules by which truths should be measured and creating false conceptions which are seeds of all wicked actions Now to clear out this more fully and directly past exception there is not one word or syllable in Scripture Doctrinally of any Power or Authorities since God Governed by his Prophets but still generally the intendment is of Kings and no other Form of Government owned in Scripture or ever intended that being only natural all Power consisting in unity of Power and evermore the Powers are intended as part of the Kings Power for there is no fraction in Government supposing it a Government so as all Power is ever but the Power of the chief Power So many signalls upon Kings and Guards for their fence and safety because if the head fail all the parts and dependency of the people must needs dissolve And here I shall take up again his words no more to be trusted with Government A Speech of great scorn and contempt upon Kings to make them the people's Servants and at their dispose to turn off when they will and to destroy and deriving no higher then out of the Peoples trust their beeing still but a depending beeing nothing being higher in nature then its first Cause and upon this basis they plant their Engine for pulling down debasing Kings and casting them into their Graves It is good therefore to see the relation that Kings have For so much as we see immediate of God in it which is not ordinarily in the things of the World but limited to the chosen people and when he appeared by his Prophets then most manifestly the Kings or at least the first Kings which shews the nature of it and right of it in all was from God leaving out the people at all in it to have any share in it All this legible in Saul David Solomon and in the removes of Kings by Gods special denunciation and sending by his Prophets The people the Executioners in some cases and circumstances so as there is no footstep or mark from God of the Peoples title over Kings or their making them or giveing them their power This in God special and appearing proves in all shews the nature of it for that which we see was done and of God and freely done and at first when no accident had been so as it was a meer promulgation out of nature and proper to the nature of it must needs be held certain to it and most reasonable to conceive of it Corresponding to these are the Texts Rom. 13.1 There is no Power but of God the Powers that be are ordained of God this referring to Kings for the words are after For Princes are not to be feared for good works but for evill and he is the Minister of God Power as Power is properly of God who is the Power â— Chr. 1.9 11. Thou hast made me a King over a People That thou mayest Judg the People over whom I have made thee King â— Sam. 16. â—er 1. I have provided me a King still pointing out his End and his Author The Texts are many more and clear it beyond all doubt or objection of man that Kings as Kings are Gods Creatures and derive not lower then from God himself as immediate to him Now because this was of the Jews a peculiar people to God we will see what evidence the Scripture yields in case of Heathen Kings Nebuchadnezzar an Heathen and Idolater was owned by God as his Servant Jer. 25.9 Nebuchadnezzar my servant Isa 45.1 And thus said the Lord to Cyrus his annointed Which is the highest emblem of Soveraignty annointing attributed to Cyrus as King that is that he had it vertually as King Ezr. 1.2 And Cyrus King of Persia The Lord God of Heaven hath
given me the Kingdomes of the Earth And Daniel most full the Pattent of the King as extensive to all Creatures and Powers under him Dan. 1. ver 37 38. The God of Heaven hath given thee a Kingdom Power and Strength and Glory and in all places where the Children of men dwell the Beasts of the field and the Fowls of the Heaven has he given into thy hand and hath made thee Ruler over them all An Illustration of Gods dominion over all Creatures and acting by Kings his immediate Vice-gerents to the end of the 5th chapter of Daniel being nothing else then Gods clayming his Title over Kings as derivative from God and accountable to him Now all this is from the great end in nature that Kings being to rule the people which is Gods proper Office and Attribute all Power and all Dominion and all Providence being his they represent God and are his Image and Effigies in Ruling and Governing and this makes their dependance to be meerly of God and not accountable to any Power under God The nature of it is shewed in that of Saul as being the first King to the Jews and being the institutive of it comprehends the nature of it The person was meerly of Gods choice not left to the people nor any power left in them much less over the King In that day shall they cry unto the Lord sayes the Text That is 1 Sam. 8.18 no power to be against the Kings Power but an appeal only to an higher Power that is to God himself his Author and Founder they might complain of him that was set over them but had not any Authority of their own over him And this makes it in its nature to be the greatest trust in the World because there is no remedy against it contrary to Mr. Baxter's sense abusing the Term making Trust subject The reason of this absolute subjection of the People to Government lyes in the nature of it that no medium can be found betwixt power of Governing and liberty in the people as not Governed to be subject only to the good of Government is no Government at all or to be subject at all therefore of meer force from its nature it leaves nothing in the wills of the people so as no such mean or half being of it can be by any constitution provision or Policy whatsoever when it comes to Govern all those things though part of the Government yet come under the governing Power Now for the Originals of Ruling Powers ordinarily amongst men as to the persons ruling in such a Line and Succession we shall find it to be still from a first Power before it came to Governing Power the one introductive of the other for Power is its matter and nature for we see all Government is Power and the Power will govern Therefore equivocally the terms and names are used sometimes calling it the Government and sometimes the Power so as it is the same and signifies the same thing inseperables in nature Government and Power no remove can be in it for where the Power is there the Government will go along with it Hence it is that there is never any discontinuance in governing Power over the people In the most confused tumultuous War and distraction that ever was yet there is power still somewhere or other that contains the peoples liberty and subjects them so as there is not one moment or minute of time in the World where society and community of man is that there is any vacuum of Power to be over them and although powers devest one another yet the Series of governing Power is still continued and in all such removes of the Powers yet the Power never falls but is kept alwayes up and is in some still and is as inseperable from the People as the matter and the Form which never are asunder For that which we call Power out of the People it is not the people but a Power acting upon the People and in such a circumstance of it if it become too powerful for the Government then it becomes the Government it self Now having shewed thus the nature of it it destroyes all those imaginary Theaters that they would erect and build popular liberty upon and popular right over Kings They would fancy governing Power to be of the wills of the people and the people the Author so impossible an assertion as I only leave it upon what I have stated and how contradictory it is to nature in all consideration of it so as still the people is but the subject matter of Government never the Author of it nor does Government ever come below the people in the cause of it but must derive out of its own cause which is power to be above the people and so in all end and acting of it All this is still to explode that Monstrous conceit of the peoples instituting the Government or more Monstrous consequence of it the people as the first cause of it to dispose of it and destroy it It is observable in Government that Laws and Liberties come afterward to the people after power of the Government it self In the Norman Conquest all lay flatted some time under it till afterward as the Reporters of those times tell us that the party of the Conqueror or their Posterity did revive the English Liberties first the Conqueror's absolute will served them to expel and dispossess the Natives and after they were glad of establishments in Government to assure their own condition and what they had gained So as hereby we see Governments the farther they go on from their beginnings the more they take in of composition to their first single Nature so as still the Originals of Government are most absolute Hence it is manifest that Power is their Fountain and first cause as such is their Natures and the People's Freedom still is under Government and when Government is most confused then is their Freedom least so as still Power is over them and are alwayes subject to it let the Form of it be what it will To consider it in common Reason and Understanding the King took his Being from the People's Trust in Mr. Baxter's sense therfore the People are to dispose of him This were for the People not to be governed for then the Right were in the People and the King betrayed to govern under another Authority to make it accomptable Therefore this supposeth a Monster in nature and it would evermore make Government destructive to it self for then it doth not govern for where the end and ultimate of Power is there the Government is I shall insert something that is legal in this pertinent to the Case of the King of England how he comes to be King Sir Edward Coke that was a man popular enough in his third part of his Institutes pag. 7. saith That there is no such thing of the Kingly Being in England as an Inter-Regnum nor any Act confers to the making
of the King but instantly by the descent of the Crown to the right Heir he is King This his and more there exprest And indeed no worldly Power can dispose alien or transfer the right of the Crown King Edward the sixth before his death would have setled the Crown upon his nearest Kinswoman the Lady Jane Gray Wife to the Lord Dudly his Sister Mary being of the Roman Church and the Council and Peers swore to this in his presence and he dyed Now what the effect Only to make them all Traytors and no other right in it Parliaments have declared for Titles but never can make any nor deprive Right It is true divers Usurpers have had Parliament Test for their Warrant for those have most need of it but still it was acted under power enforcing and so it was nothing but mearly so long as the Power lasted Usurpation doth not come into possession without power and it draggs Parliaments after it and deprives all reality but meer Hypocrisy in all that is acted or pretended to by Parliament or People I have no more now to consider of than of the Right of Kings having spoken of their Original Cause Power c. Now this first is generally from the great end of it that is Government which as Government is ever good good as Government though it may be an evil Government nor can any failings in the particularities so over-rule the common good of it but still it hath good of Government in it But this comes not to the Question of Right in the person which we are to inquire Certainly it cannot be Conquest which is only a great Riot and multiplying of Rapines and Man-slaughters it is all Wickedness which is only distinguished from common wickedness as it transcends all other actings of wickedness and such is the nature of Conquest by excess of wicedness to make it self above offending and punishment Then it cannot be in submission of the People to it being first conquered still before they consent and if they partly resist and gain conditions yet it is in respect of the power which is cause of all the following of what nature soever it be And it is not possible that any one can receive a Right from his doing wrong Some suppose upon the future settlement and equability of the Government established Title may result yet still all this is after the power and cannot imply in any kind a not Being of it being first supposed absolute at least not their condition to resist it Besides in the Case of a former Right the Peoples consent cannot evacuate a right in the former Prince outed or his posterity Now that it appears directly that none of these things make right or are of any force to it it is cleared by this that if the outed Prince can recover and regain Power these things vanish as unlawful and as wicked consentings and compliance and so long as the old Right can possibly retain its self in memory add but power to it and it is ever unquestionable One instance with us in England of sixty years discontinuance yet when it recovered power to act all the Usurpation went for nothing and the old came in as Right not as Conquest Where yet shall we find it Nothing but the Old extinguishing by long continuance of the latter and that becoming natural and consent goes with Nature so hard it is to the Titles of Princes and so precious to the People to retain them and so dangerous to lose them And all the Intervals filled and taken up with the uncertainty of Government and all the accidents that attend want of Title Therefore since only time and long time makes unquestionable Right to Princes it is of all Rights or Titles the hardest to be attained to and must be most absolute since nothing but User can give in its Authority therefore it is most unquestionable venerable unchangable independent of any other Cause and so under no other power and never falls but with the ruine of the People And this is a high perfection of Kingly Government since no other Form of Government can have this precious thing Title in it that is Right in the Person which is the Cement of Government and half the means of it and consent goes along with it whereby all the People act subordinately and this makes it easy and without force because of this tacite consent of the People to it for all operation of the Soul is but consent consent is the genius of the Government by which it acts and all the People and all common Interest doth center in the Right of it and find their rest And now I have done with the Argument I have only something of Observation from the natural effects of Rebellion and destroying rightful Government as we see it in ours Now the Work is done and all in the Power of the destroyers What comes of it Two very natural and great effects the one is Wickedness all manner of wickedness impieties false Religions Cruelty of manners and actings multiplicity of Tyrants having destroyed the great Tyrant-Government under a King as they called it all persons that get Power act as Tyrants Multitude of Tyrants out of the People themselves acting wickedly in all parts Cities and Towns where most Interest of the People lies strange Principles in profession and opinion and despising rancks and degrees of persons and of Kings and Supreams and bringing all into a contempt and baseness against order of nature and nature of Government which consists in difference and degrees and subordination To follow this subject of our present condition what a Monster England is become no such Copy of it in the World It must be all written and taken out of it self the strange infinite forms of Wickedness both in Faith and manners base horrible Conceptions monstrous Notions all hatched and have their production from the putrified matter of standing in condition of Rebellion and loosed from the rightful governing Power and running loose into parties and into their own sense having cast off the right Power which keeps to Order and Unity all Order and Unity being the effect of Government and the Monstrousness and Infiniteness that enters in the vacancy or deficiency of it for Errors in their nature are infinite whereas all true Beings have but their natural proportions and definitions The other is unsettledness which is the Curse of Usurpation and of destroying rightful Government that it cannot resolve it self into any thing of certainty or Being to the People under the power of it As we see these persons to perpetuate their Wickedness can make nothing of it The King 's Right and the wrong they do doth shine out of darkness it self out of that rubbish of confusion and destruction they would bury it under We see they can make nothing of all the Power having the whole it being the King's Power and the King 's Right they are confounded with it do but toss and tumble this Power over and over it can no where settle to make a Government but monstrous violence grows out of it and this is all they can create from it which doth admirably confirm the King 's right and that only in that doth consist the People's Interest and what a strange spirit and principle is in it that though troden down and debased reviled scandalized and kept out yet it riseth against all Power not in nature left or possible to make a settlement or Justice or Safety to the People without it the People undone by the usurping it so dangerous is a King 's Right when devested and displaced and so precious to preserve in its true place My last I will conclude withal which may reflect upon the whole is that I conceive the best way of calling Parliaments is frequently and never by necessity for when a King hath most need it proves most dangerous therefore it is never to be used as the last remedy Kings ought to have something in reserve to help them off that again if it grow averse and incline to danger And it was the total ruine of the King that he was so much a loser before he came to play this Game When all was distempered and disordered round about the out-Nations up in Arms and the home-People poysoned discontented then he calls a Parliament when no thing totally and mainly could have destroyed him but that for every grievance and every misery and every distress of the King 's served them for matter against the King and so turned the cause of putting himself upon them for help to be the means of their depressing him and destroying him It is like that our Saviour saith putting a new piece of Cloth into an old Garment it makes the rent worse so all the parts so fear and unsound as nothing to bear the searching severe remedy of a Parliament and apt to grow wicked with their Power FINIS