when it is made apparent that these mistakes are made serviceable to the Popish Plot and the means which the Popish party prosecute to compass and bring about the ruine of our Church But that nothing may be wanting that lies in my poor power for pulling their Foot out of the Snare I shall more distinctly consider them First I shall desire them to consider what our Government is and where the true knowledge of it is to be found And where can it be found but in our Statute-Books the Commentaries of our Law the Histories of our Government and of the Kingdom Search them if you be at leisure if you are not consult those that have read them and whose business and employment it is to understand them and you cannot fail to be informed That the King hath no power to make Laws that both Houses of Parliament must joyn with the King in making a Law It can with no more reason be concluded that the King hath the Legislative Power because his Assent makes the Bills in Parliament Laws than it can because the third Unit added to two makes a Triad that the other two do not go to the making of that number When a matter 's moved from the King in Parliament to pass into a Law the Commons consent last The Letters Patents of Ed. 3. for making the Eldest Son of a King in Succession Prince of Wales and Duke of Cornwal Sir E. Cook 8. R. was confirmed as they must have been otherwise they would have been void by the House of Commons And yet we will not say that the House of Commons can make a Prince of Wales or Duke of Cornwal And yet upon no better reason than this some men will talk as if they believed themselves that the Legislative power is in the King when no King of England yet ever pretended to it but by their process of Law have punished such officious and mischievous Knaves They also will tell you that the Laws are the measures of our Allegiance and the Kings Prerogative and declare the terms of Obedience and Government That a Legislative authority is necessary to every Government and therefore we ought not to want it and therefore Parliaments in which our Government hath placed the making of Laws cannot be long discontinued nor their Conventions rendred illusory and in vain which is all one as to want them That to Govern by Laws implieth that great fundamental Law that new Laws shall be made upon new emergencies and for avoiding unsufferable mischiefs to the State By the Statutes of 4 Ed. 3. c. 14. 36 Ed. 3. c. 10. it is provided that Parliaments be holden once every year The Statute of this King required a Parliament every three years which being an affirmatory Law doth not derogate from those of Ed the 3. But if the King doth not call a Parliament once in a year he neglects these Laws and if he delays calling a Parliament three years he neglects the other Law of his own time too And for that he is by the Law intrusted with the calling of Parliaments he is at liberty to call them within the times appointed And that Laws ought to be made for Redress of mischiefs that may ensue appears by the Statute of provisors 25 E. 3 cap. 23. In which we have these words Whereupon the Commons have prayed our said Soveraign Lord the King that sith the right of the Crown of England and the Law of the said Realm is such that upon the mischiefs Dammage which happeneth to this Realm be ought and is bound of the Accord of his said People in his Parliament thereof to make Remedy and Law in avoiding the mischief and damage which thereof cometh which that King agreed to by his Royal Assent thereto given I dare be bold to say that never any Bill in Parliament was lost and wanted the Royal Assent that was promoted by the general desires of the people If Popery therefore which is the greatest mischief that ever threatned this Kingdom can be kept out by a Law we ought to have such a Law and nothing can hinder such a Law to be past for that purpose but want of an universal desire to have it I desire these Gentlemen to consider how they will answer it to our Saviour at the last day if they suffer his true Religion and the professors of it to be destroyed and persecuted when nothing but their desires of a thing lawful to be had and of right due was requisite to prevent it Their sufferings will be just and righteous from God if their sin occasioneth it and very uncomfortable to themselves The extent of the Legislative Authority is nowhere to be understood but by our Acts of Parliament in which it hath been exercised and used and by such Acts that declare the extent of its power By the 13 Eliz. cap. 1. it is made Treason during that Queens Life and forfeiture of Goods and Chattels afterwards To hold maintain affirm that the Queen by the Authority of the Parliament of England is not able to make Laws and Statutes of sufficient force and validity to limit and bind the Crown of this Realm and the descent limitation inheritance and Government thereof And this authority was exercised by Entailing the Crown in Parliament in the times of Richard the 2d Henry the 4th Henry the 6th Edward the 4th Richard the 3d Henry the 7th thrice in the time of Henry 8th and upon the Marriage of Queen Mary to King Philip of Spain both the Crowns of England and Spain were Entailed whereby it was provided that of the several Children to be begotten upon the Queen one was to have the Crown of England another Spain another the Low-Countries The Articles of Marriage to this purpose were confirmed by Act of Parliament Those that are truly Loyal to our present Soveraign have reason to recognize with high satisfaction that such a power of altering and limiting the descent of the Crown is duly lodged in the King and States of the Realm For under the Authority of an Act of Parliament of the Kingdom of Scotland we derive our selves to the happiness of his Government and He his Title to the Crown of Scotland which drew to him the Imperial Crown of England For Robert Stewart first King of Scotland of that Family lived in concubinate with Elizabeth Mure and by her had three Sons John Robert and Alexander afterwards he Married Eufame Daughter to the Earl of Ross and after was Crowned King of Scotland He had by her Walter Earl of Athol and David Earl of Straherne When Eufame his wife died he Married Elizabeth Mure. After that by one Act of Parliament he made his natural Children first Noble that is to say John Earl of Carrick Robert Earl of Menteith and Alexander Earl of Buchquhane And shortly after by another Parliament he limited the Crown in Tail Successively to John Robert and Alexander his Children by Elizabeth Mure
Hypothesis especially for that it was Re-printed and is magnified by the Factors for the Popish Plot. And first I will draw it out shortly in all its strength and make it more argumentative than he hath left it for he hath left his willing Readers to find out the Argument and to make the Conclusion Adam saith he was the Father of Mankind that to him as Father belonged an Absolute dominion over all his descendents that all Men being so born are born under subjection to such an Authority This Authority so reserved upon us by God and the condition of our birth and the manner of coming into the World is to be submitted to in the person of the present King who by becoming King is for that reason vested with this Absolute Authority This power and the duty of our subjection to it results from our being Born and coming into the World after the manner of men This power of Kings is grounded by him meerly upon this natural resultance and not from any positive and express Revelation from God for such neither we nor he yet ever heard of We will now then consider what there is of weight in this fictitious Reason of Government in which the World is so lately illuminated by this Speculator what force there is in it to unravel all Models of Government that are framed in the World to confound Kingdoms and Nations and to give Warranty to the bringing upon us all the miseries that are designed by the Papists for us which we are to be prepared to suffer with most conscientiuos patience from the comforts and supports of this insolent and vain pretence I appeal to the Reader of him whether in thus stating his Doctrine I have not made it more Argumentative and concluding to his purpose than he left it I will take this method of remonstrating the futility of his Hypothesis By considering what a Father is and what his Duty towards and Power over his Children in which it will be found that nothing of Empire belongs to him as Father that no more belonged to Adam over his Children than did to any of his Children over their own That the Authority of Parents over their Children continues together with Soveraign power and is not at all abated by it and that it cannot be the same because it continues entire with it That there is no footsteps in the Records of the Old Testament to verifie his Hypothesis that we could not have wanted some Declarations about it from God if true it being a matter so necessary for us to know That no claims were made that we know of to any such authority in the earliest times when the Right was unprejudiced and must have been best understood and could not have been forgotten as now it is utterly Besides that it was never used The first Histories Recorded in the Bible make every Child of the common Ancestor alike independent and absolute and so it would for ever have continued And to this day we should have been in the state of Nature and not United in any Government and so no King yet in the world notwithstanding the Paternal Authority That his Instances of exercising Soveraign power by the Fathers of Families are not concluding and to his purpose That admitting Adam had while he lived been Universal Monarch yet if there be no other reason and Foundation of Monarchy in the World but this of Sir Robert Filmer Adams right Heir not being known and if he were might perhaps be an Ideot or Lunatick some Cobler or Botcher under a Stall or mean Person unfit to govern we can have no rightful King in the World for certain it is that there is nothing in the World so personal as Relations and the duties and Rights that do result from them For they are neither assignable to nor can be exercised or exacted by and between any persons but the Relatives themselves So that this power of Sir R. F. hath no foundation of reason in the nature of things was in Fact never exercised and is now utterly fallen to the ground and all Government with it A more puzled vain sensless and unlearned Paradox was never yet offer'd to the world nor a thing more mischievous ever received For first the absolute Power of a Prince over his Subjects is not at all connatural to the dutiful Care of a Father over his Children It was the good pleasure of God that this part of the immense world should be planted with men endowed with a Capacity to admire his Power Wisdom and Goodness and therefore to render him praise and worship He design'd that we should be happy in our own enjoyments and promote the happiness of each other which is not to be performed but by a mind serene beneficent and loving He provided that the disseminations of Love should run parallel and be under alike necessity with the propagation of our kind For the planting Love in our Nature he instituted Marriage for Procreation that we might owe our Being to the state of the greatest and most agreeable friendship and tenderest affection That for many years we should be educated by a pure single and undesigning love of our Parents and the friendship of that conjugal State should be maintained by and principally exercised in their common care of their Issue Every Act of Love of either of the Parents to the Child being the best instance of love to the other of them an endearment of a reciprocal love and a provocation to the like love and care of the Child And for this love the Children naturally pay a return of an affectionate honour to their Parents and by that honour which we so naturally render our 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 our Earthly gods we are initiated trained up and instructed devoutly to worship our heavenly Father God did likewise ordain and so it was that all Mankind should derive from one stock be made of one blood and every Man every Mans Brother of the same Family and cognation By this it was provided by the Father of us all that we should be born into the World under the tenderest care for our preservation and improvement of our Nature be powerfully enclined to love and beneficence whereby we may be pleased with our selves and at Peace and Amity with our whole kind and disposed to celebrate the infinite Wisdom and Goodness of our almighty Creator with most affectionate Praises That the Generations of Mankind might certainly proceed God planted in our Natures powerful and irresistible instincts to procreation which the Jews call a Precept tho after this no Precept seem'd necessary for encrease and multiply they make a Command But we follow our own propensions and have no conscience of obedience to a Law when we observe and follow them which are so strong pleasurable and entertaining that if God had not planted a restraint of Modesty in our Natures and a sense of decency we should over-do the business and degrade our selves
and doth virtually renounce the Government may not be left out of the Succession This is the true state of the Question and the Question thus stated gives its own solution And who except those of the Conspiracy do not so state it and allow it As to his Question Whence the Parliament derives their Power let him know that the Parliament derive their Power and Authority from the same Original the King derives His The King hath not His Power from them nor they theirs from the King They both derive their Authority from the Consent of the People in the first Constitution of the Government either tacit or express or by their express or tacit Consent in the insensible and little or great and more remarkable alterations that the Government hath suffered in the course of Time The King can make the Parliaments Power no greater than it is nor they His. Though true it is he may put an unlimited Trust reposed in Him into Stated Laws and Govern by Counsels established into Laws which is not to alter or lessen His Power but to make it more Safe and Wise and impeccable in the exercise of it He may ascertain the indefinitness of his Power that it may not be abus'd And that King doth best provide for a happy and wise Administration of his Government who leaves the fewest things to fortuitous resolves who reduceth his Prerogative to the measures of Common Right and makes the Kingdom secure and safe by leaving the Succession less Capacity and Scope to do mischief It is mostly incumbent upon his Sacred Majesty to secure the Government committed to his Care and keep it upright and steady upon its own Basis and to preserve all things in a due and Legal Course To watch to prevent all machinations against it and such as would destroy and subvert it and by his executive power of the Laws obtain to us the ends of Government that we may live quiet and peaceable Lives in all Godliness and Honesty For the sake of this High Trust and the Dignity of this Office his Person is most Sacred and Inviolable The King and his great Council providing for the establishment and security of the Government in their proceedings are not tyed up to forms of Judicial proceedings but are to act upon such inducements and in such methods whereby the Wisest men govern their affairs in which they are at perfect Liberty and not under the restraint of Laws They cannot do unjustly whatever methods or means they use that are prudentially and morally necessary to this End This power can be no more wanting in Governments than we can be without Government That which establisheth the one which is the Law of God declared in the Make and Frame of Humane Nature affirms and allows the other By the Authority of this Law of God so declared and promulgated as I have told you do Kings Reign and Senators or Princes Decree Justice By virtue of this Law and in Obedience to it is this Bill fram'd against which this Considerer declaims like a speaking Brute From this Law of God the said Bill when it passeth into a Law will have its Approbation Sanction and Establishment But against this Bill with his accustomed Truth Candor and Modesty he doth object That if such an Authority shall belong to the Parliament as to disable one successor upon such inducements as are sufficiently known a Parliament some time or other may be corrupted by a King and by mercenariness comply with him to sell the Succession of the Crown to a Foreigner We all well enough know that this Bill is designed to keep out the Tyranny of France or at least the French Tyranny But for this I leave the King to reckon with him and the Pensioners of the late long Parliament The Gentleman continues to add the story of Ahab contriving to possess himself of Naboth's Vineyard by causing him to be falsly accused of Blaspheming God and the King by which if true by the Jewish Laws Ahab had been Justly entitled to it as a Royal Escheat But if he had not been as stupid as a Block he had not mentioned this story which is a president and an adjudg'd case against himself who but a Line before had so vilely Blasphemed so great a King a far greater King than Ahab though the Parliament divide some Authority with the King in the Government But what were the Constitutions of the Jewish Monarchy this Writer of Considerations I am sure knows no more than his Foot-boy But let him know that the Romish Religion is a Blaspheming God and to bring the Kings Life in danger is worse than to Blaspheme him See what wise Work this Considerer makes when forsooth he would argue That the Duke of York cannot be shut out of the Succession no more than Ahab could take Naboth's Vineyard from him The man of Weighty Considerations tells us in the next Paragraph That God was Incensed against Esau for selling his Birth-right and therefore the Duke must not lose his contrary to his Will and all Justice by a prevailing Faction of his Inferiours Who ever told him That God was Incensed against Esau for selling his Birth-right Did not God purpose the Birth-right to Jacob before the Brothers were born and before they had done Good or Evil Could God be angry with him for agreeing and executing his own Purpose and Decree Did not Isaac and Rebekah both know and understand the Oracle and in Obedience to it Jacob was effectively Blessed by his Father Isaac's confirming the Blessing first gotten by surprize and by the Solemnity of that Blessing his Father Isaac transferred the right of the Promise made to Abraham to be fulfilled in the Line of Jacob Indeed the place he quotes in Heb. 12.17 is this Let no Whoremonger or Prophane Person be amongst you like Esau that would prefer a Sensual pleasure before the great things that were promised by our Lord to them that obey him Wherein the mention of Esau's Story is only to illustrate and set off what they fell short of the Grace of God and the designs of his Holy Institution Indeed if he could prove to us that his Royal Highness being the younger Brother had any such thing transmitted to him in his Generation as the Jews called the Segulah by which they mean some peculiarity which did appropriate the Right of the Promises made to Abraham which Jacob had and Esau wanted they say If he had any Divine mark upon him besides the Contingency of his Birth that design'd him mark'd him for a King besides Roman Zeal there would be some Consequence in his Discourse and this would be the best Argument that he hath yet us'd though the King would be little beholden to him for it But where God doth not interpose by express Revelation Humane Affairs Concerns and Interests of all sorts must be Governed and Ruled by the Laws Orders and Decrees of the respective Governments I would not have been
Consequence whereof is that he very impertinent or else the Duke of York is now Prince of Wales and Duke of Cornwal and that he is within the Statute of 25 Ed. 3. This Argument of his he leaves to be further illustrated and pursued by the Church-men and Civilians But lest they should fail this Epistoler for I now am well assured that this question and cause is to be managed by the Sword by Massacres and the French Plot and not by Writing I have adventured and will proceed to illustrate his Arguments and pursue them into their Consequences leave the Epistoler of Quality to be pursued with laughter for he deserves no worse if it be true that he professeth that he is a Protestant and Lover of the Government Now he will he saith as best sorting with his profession and with a discourse of the nature drive proofs from the Authority of the Common and Statute-Law of England From whence it follows That the Common-Law and Statute-Laws of England are proper to be consulted with for declaring the Laws of God and the Laws of Nature which they never yet pretended to do And Secondly it follows from thence that this Epistoler no more understands the Common and Statute-Laws of England and what places they are to have in the Conduct of our manners and guidance of our Consciences than he doth as appears by what he hath said before what is the Law of God or Nature He lays it down as most evident That all the humane Acts and Powers in the World cannot hinder the Discent of the Crown upon the next Heir of the Blood because though they may hinder the Possession and Enjoyment of it This is a Dowry which the great King of Kings hath reserved to his own immidiate Donation and hath placed above the reach of a mortal Arm and mankind can no more hinder or intercept it than it can the Influences of the Stars or the Heavens upon the Sublunary world or beat down the Moon The Consequence of this is that the man is Lunatick and of insane memory and hath forgot and denies what in the same breath he affirms Eor he agrees humane Power may hinder the possession and enjoyment and yet it is no more possible to hinder the Descent than to stop the Influences of Heaven and to pull down the Moon Secondly It follows that that which is done is impossibe to be done Thirdly that there is no Right at all by Descent nor can be any Descent of the Crown for that it is reserved as he says to Gods immediate Donation And we never yet heard of any immediate Gift or Donation thereof from God And if the Duke will stay until that be done we most solemnly declare we will accept him for our King and he shall be a King to intents and purposes as he terms it we will be kinder and juster to him than his Freinds of the same perswasion with the Epistoler who will give him the Name and Style and would Abridge him as they pretend of the Power and Authority of a King He says further That when the Duke is King that the Legiance and Fidelity of the Subject is due to him by the immutable Law of Nature from whence it clearly follows that he must stay until that time come That when he is a Loyal and Foyal King we are to be Loyal and Foyal Liege-men and Subjects For Calvin's Case which he cites by the general Opinions of all considerable Lawyers is Apocryphal where it makes Allegiance absolute and more extensive than the Legal Power of Kings But here he subjoyns such loathsom Pedantry that I cannot but remark it He subjoyns to his mention of Calvin's Case that Aristotle Nature's Amanuensis as he calls him agrees with that Case in that he saith 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and Seneca's Natura commenta est Regem But for my promise sake I will make no further Observations upon him than by bare repeating of it to expose it That the King and his Successors are Kings by Nature he proves For that the Statute Laws do frequently stile the King our Natural Liege-Lord And for further proof tells us that in Indictments it is set forth that the Treason is commited contra debitum Fidei Ligeantiae quod naturaliter de jure impendere debet And the King in Indictments is sometimes styled Natural Lord. Whence it follows that we are born under Allegiance that no man that is born under any form of Government can deny Faith unto it though he never expresly swore Allegiance That the King of France is not our Natural Lord neither doth the Oath of Allegiance bind us to that Form of Government if introduced because the King was born to no such Kingship Nor is our King a Natural Lord to any Forreigners that come hither and the Form of the Indictment against Forreigners as the Lawyers know must be in another Form And further it followes That in all changes of Government the word natural is to be adjoyned to Allegiance in all Indictments of Treason committed against the Government in its several changes that it may suffer And this all the Lawyers with one voice pronounce He sums up all that he hath said before thus No humane Power can hinder the Descent of the Crown upon the Right Heir the Descent makes the King Allegiance is due to the King by the Law of Nature The Law of Nature cannot be abrogated by humane Power That common-Common-Law is more worthy than Statute-Law and the Law of Nature more worthy than both But upon better consideration of the whole matter it follows with better Consequence That Nature hath made no Laws about Property nor about Governments otherwise all Laws of Right and Property and all Governments would have been the same for what she makes are Universal as the Nature of man Besides that if he knew where she became a Legislatrix or if this Gentleman could direct us to a veiw of her Pandects we ought to acoord all our Laws to them Secondly That Common-Law is not to be preferred before Statute-Law For the Judges who declare the Common-Law are not wiser than Parliaments and the Common-Law appears so bad a Rule that it requires oftentimes amendment Thirdly It follows that no Legislation is Lawful for that which is to be preferred is best and that which is best is to be a Law for ever Fourthly That no Allegiance is due to any Prince but whom the Law appoints and as the Law appoints That he that is not King to him no Allegiance is due That humane Power is competent enough to alter as well as make any humane Constitution That which by humane Authority was made and made also descendible for all Crowns are not descendible can be altered by the same Authority in its Discent The greater part of this ensuing Discourse is the remembrance of the Tragedies that have been acted upon the English Nation by our Kings For we have not only suffered
Artificial Defensative and Out-work which is prescribed by great Moralists as necessary to weak Minds to secure their Virtue especially when Virtue it self is out of Repute and disgraced You have persisted constantly in one even Tenor of Life have been Uniform Regular and Consistent with your self There may have been some complyance in appearance to your Lordship but you never yet departed from your self nay you have not so much as incur'd the suspicion of so doing No man makes any Question about your Lordship or what it is you design it is no mans Enquiry no mans doubt You have been always the same and are as every man concludes immutably so You are not unhappy to pass under Conjectures and various Opinions there is no need of a Cryptique man to unriddle any intricacies in the course of your Life Votivâ pateat veluti descripta Tabellâ Vita senis No false insinuations can hurt your Name No Service but what is just will ever be imposed upon you no Mysteries of Iniquity will be committed to your Breast no man will be offended at you but he that hath reason to be displeased with himself and takes himself in a sort reproved by every honest man as every man doth that condemns himself You cannot be disgraced by any Faction but a real dishonour will return upon those that attempt it Every honest man will be sensible if you being reckoned and esteemed a publick good are lessened And you cannot fail of Honour from the worst of men when in Honouring you they Honour themselves and honestate their designs My Lord You represent to us the Condition of the Nation not desperate and incurable whilst you preside in His Majesties Councils for no man can believe you would be an unconcerned Spectator of our Ruine or the Preparations to it or that you would contribute any thing thereto by giving us a vain confidence of a secure condition and suffer your fam'd Integrity to be Suborned to so mischievous a Deceit My Lord Your Lordship hath afforded a mighty recommendation of sincerity and simplicity to the practice if the world you have Honoured thereby the Age wherein you live acquired true Honours to your self and are thereby become a publick Blessing I hope I shall have your Lordships Pardon in making a further advantage of your Lorships Noble Integrity and Wisdom by presuming to offer these Sheets to your Lordships favourable Judgment That I adventure to appear to so great a Judgment is the best Argument I can use to the World for my integrity and honest designment therein and besides the good Opinion of so great a man as your self would give great assurance to my own Conscience If your Lordship doth think any thing therein useful to the World I am sure it will have your Lordships Countenance which will make them more useful since as my Lord Bacon observes The Cause of Laws and Defence of the ancient State hath ever found this Priviledge That such as for their own Interest disturb the same Excuse if they Honour not their Defenders My Lord I shall ever pray for increase of Honour to your Lordship and that full of years you may change this Life for a better to which I am bound for that I esteem you a Publick Good if I had no particular Obligations as I have to your Lordship and for the greatest Reason I take my self Obliged to be in true Honour of your Lordship My Lord Your Lordships Most Obedient Servant THO HUNT THE PREFACE I Cannot but take notice That my honest Design in my Argument and Postscript to serve the Church of England and therein the Nation hath been by many perverted and how it hath been endeavoured to make them loose that effect to which they were sincerely directed I have therein asserted the rightful Authority the Bishops have in the Government represented the just Expectations the Nation hath of their due Exercise of that Authority for the publick good and have endeavoured to remove the great prejudice against their Order especially those that are occasioned by the Mistakes of the Inferiour Clergy for such we have taken notice of as those which do most hurt then esteem and affect them with the greatest dishonour and danger I have therein faithfully defended the Authority and Power of the Bishops in the Government But these I take to be but other Names for the Duty they owe to the Common-wealth Civil Honours and Dignities declare respectively the trusts that the Government hath plac'd in the persons under such Characters and admeasure the Duties and Offices that are expected from them The present state of the Kingdom doth most importunately urge and require that they should perform their duty in its fullest and utmost extent and thereby vindicate the honour of their Order It cannot fail being venerable in the same degrees we find it beneficial All positive Duties indeed have an indefinite latitude and we have a great liberty in the performing of them They are not peccant against the rule of Virtue who do not always exhibit to us the most Excellent Actions It is not expected from the Duty that every man owes to his King and Countrey that he should serve them always to his utmost Capacity and with an Heroical Bravery But he that doth not lend all the assistance to their service which his place requires and his power can perform in the greatest Exigency in the Extreamest need is a wretched Traytor and Betrayer of his Countrey In the Postscript I have by no means lessened the Authority of the Church or narrowed their Capacity of serving the Publick weal. But with great satisfaction considered their Authority and how much they may contribute to the uniting our Distracted Nation almost ruined by our Divisions which are occasioned and promoted by the Enemies of our Church and principally designed for her Destruction If we loose our Government for the sake of her ruine and in order to that we loose it and which is worse if we lose it it must be by the instrumentality of her Clergy if the Government be not preserved the Church must perish Therefore I did not confine my thoughts to a Defence of the Church her Rights but employ'd them for the Preservation of the Church her self and did endeavour to remove some great Prejudices and Mistakes that assist the designs of her Enemies upon her Mistakes to which our Enemies owe all the power they have to hurt us in virtue of these Mistakes their malice is onely considerable it could never have affected us nor we brought within any danger or fear of them if these vain Opinions had not been entertained by some of our Church-men And yet two Discourses so agreeable in all the parts thereof one to another united in Design and that could not possibly but concur to the thoughts of any man that truly and heartily design'd to serve to the prosperity of the Church and State are endeavoured to be set at variance with
are pleased with these things there is no wrong done them and if we affect a change of our Religion and Government it may be easily obtain'd The King hath no reason to consent to disinherit his Brother if the People rejoyce in the hopes of such a Successor or at least will acquiesce under that fate but if we would avoid it we must deprecate it in such applications to his Majesty as consists with true Loyalty and with such earnestness as the matter requires and at the same time represent the smalness of the numbers of Addressers and the inconsiderableness of their quality Thus his Majesty would understand better the Sense of his People especially when most of the Addressers themselves shall by joyning in such Applications shew what they meant by Lawful Successors in their Addresses And that when in the same Addresses they did engage to serve the King with their Lives and Fortunes they did not intend to subject themselves and all that they have to his Majesties absolute pleasure In that they thank his Majesty for his Promise of frequent Parliaments they desire them and when they thanked him for his promise to maintain the Protestant Religion they desired the continuance of it and such a Law as is absolutely necessary for its preservation Then it may appear that the Abhorrers themselves did not understand that the name of the Earl of Shaftsbury in the business of Abhorrence is but like the name of John a Styles and John an Oaks of Titius and Sempronius in putting a fictitious Case And that the onely Question askt was Who are the most damnable Plotters at this time the Protestants or Papists And that this was the Question intended to be put to the People in the Sollicitation of Addresses of Abhorrence is evident If we did dutifully represent to his Majesty these Proceedings as the Arts of our Enemies for dividing us and the Methods of our designed Ruine we should not be undone and there is nothing more than this necessary for the preventing of our Ruine since we have so gracious a King Our King is duly stiled Pater Patriae he will not suffer his People to be calamitous as no good Prince can suffer his to be from any cause whatsoever that is to be removed no not from their own Fears and Jealousies if they are innocent reasonable and probable The Affections of a Prince to his People supersede his Affection towards any private Relation So strong is the Tye of Duty upon him from his Office to prevent publick Calamities as no respect whatsoever no not of the Right Line can discharge nor will he himself ever think if duly addressed that it can By the Kingly Office he is taken up from amongst men and is made a God to us he is not to suffer the passions of a private man so as to be swayed by them In this high capacity In the matters of the Government nothing ought to determine him but the Common weal to which purpose all Governments are instituted Besides the excellent humanity of our King which hath made his Reign so clement doth dispose him to a tender Affection towards his People committed to his care and must powerfully incline and perswade him to do any thing that is necessary for preventing such Evils which as they are greater than can be supported by his People so if they come upon us we shall never be able to emerge or recover from under their pressures There wants nothing but a universal desire of being happy to make us so and nothing but a declaring our steady abhorrence of the Evils we cannot sustain is further necessary for preventing them Our Enemies will be destroyed meerly by our uniting they have no direct Strengths of their own all their hopes and confidence is in our Divisions We may evacuate their designe by making it impossible without a Conflict with any of the Evils fear'd We shall have no Enemies from that time we are at peace with our selves if we have courage enough to say we are not content to perish we are immediately safe Our Traytors would disappear if we had no Neuters and we cannot lose either our Religion or Government if we have a just concern for them If the Protestants would in time understand that the single Art and Stratagem they have to undo us is by dividing us we should not assist it by receiving false and hated Characters of the several Sects that are amongst us from the Popish Writers and represent them to our selves as more detestable than the Popish Traytors and alike Enemies to the Government It is no more agreeable to a scrupulous man about a Ceremony of the Church to depose and murder his lawful Prince than to a man of a nice Conscience to be impiously wicked Too true it is all Nations and Religions have been sometime or other stain'd with the horrid guilts of Deposing and Murdering Kings under a pretence of destroying Tyrants and vindicating their Country from Oppression The Bishops concur'd with the Temporal Lords in deposing the second Richard In an Address to that King they justifi'd themselves therein Ex Antiquo Statuto from the Constitutions of the Kingdom and Ex facto nuperrimè dolendo by which they meant the deposing of Edward the Second Knighton one of the Decem Scriptores published by Mr. Selden gives us the Address in terminis Until the Collectors of Dissenters Sayings can justifie the Bishops in this matter let them not trouble the world any more with the farrago of some of their wicked Sayings thereof to make a Character of a Dissenter for it belongs no more to him as such to be a Traytor or Rebel than it doth to the Character of the English Bishops to depose their King and cause his most Sacred Bloud to be shed and profan'd as a common thing But for removing the fears that our cautious Church-men have of Dissenters which hath cast them into a cold indifferency and inert neutrality at this time when if ever the Applications of an active Prudence are required from all honest men and lovers of their King Country and Religion I wish they would weigh and consider the mischiefs on either hand What the Popish Party designes and what the Dissenters would have What powers the Popish Party have what endeavours they use to force their Superstitions upon us and to change our Government That the Dissenters have neither Power nor Will to destroy our Religion or Government They are already of our Church and it is expected that they should be Petitioners to the Bishops for their intercession towards obtaining some Indulgence in some little matters that may bring them into an entire Communion with us It may easily be known who are for the preservation of our Government or dissolution of it by their Desires or Abhorrences of Parliaments and who desires Parliaments more than Dissenters which would preserve our ancient Government in Church and State and the true Religion establish'd among
us and recover us into a firm Peace and Union by just and necessary provisions for their support Whilst the Government is preserved the Church is safe and secure for no man can fear that the King and the States of the Realm will ever give place to wild Fanaticism and suffer so excellent an Ecclesiastical constitution as we enjoy to be subverted for any Extravagancies that shall deserve the name of Fanaticism But the pretences of our Neuters for their Neutrality are not more groundless than their reasonings are absurd by which they oppose the only remedies to the Evils that now beset us and the greater we fear That absurd Opinion Dominium fundatur in gratiâ is charg'd upon those that are for the Exclusion of the Duke and they think by pronouncing this piece of absurd Latine they have at once put to silence and shame all the reasons of Nature Religion and State that urge it and require it That there is nothing can be more absurd than that Dogma will appear for that almost whole Dutch Systems of false and paltry Theology go to the making of it in the most tolerable sense it can have and for that it hath been improv'd into a most villainous sense to give countenance to the vilest Outrages of the German Anabaptists But Dominium signify'd Property not Government and Rule until our admirably accomplished young Divines of this last Age out of their great skill in the Latine Tongue would have it so for the service of the great Defender of the Protestant Religion and of the Church of England All Rights as well Natural as Civil are forfeitable by Crimes in such measure and degree as Laws appoint and as good Government requires Notwithstanding Grace be not admitted a good Title to any thing that the Saint will desire though of the Roman stamp I confess Natural Rights but they are very few are not controlable by Laws but are by Laws to be defended and the free use of them to be justifyed and allowed most certainly not to be condemned by any Civil Authority A right in Nature every man hath to live until he hath forfeited his Life Whatever he doth that is necessary for his preservation is and ought to be justifyed by all Laws though he kills though he breaks the Civil Inclosure of Property which cannot and was never intended to shut out the Natural Right that every man hath in the last extreamities Every man hath a right to his plank in a Wreck though the owner of the Ship perish by him for want of it All the Authority of all the Legislators in the world united cannot make unlawful any Act that is done in self-preservation Sub moderamine inculpatae tutelae where the man is innocent But Civil Rights are without iniquity alterable and controleable by Laws and by acts of Government ordainable to the publick good Nothing is so intirely perfectly and abstractly Civil as Government the perfect Creature of men in society made by pact and consent and not otherwise most certainly not otherwise and therefore most certainly ordainable by the whole Community for the safety and preservation of the whole to which it is in the reason and nature of it intirely design'd But we are told by some that will not contest the lawfulness of Exclusion That we trouble our selves with the fears of an imaginary danger That we are endeavouring a remedy against the Evil that may never happen That we impertinently trouble our selves about providing that which we may never want or need That the Duke may dye before the King And if the Duke should survive he neither can nor will change our Religion That it is not lawful for any man Occupare facinus quod timet and to destroy the person whom he fears I wish it were considered on the other side That if the Duke dye before the King there is no wrong done to the Duke by Excluding him It is onely his hopes and expectations that are cut off for the preventing our fears a possibility of hurt provided against by shutting out the possibility of effecting it and that not by any hurt to his Person but meerly by disabling it a Remedy proportioned and suited to the disease we desire to be eased of our fears by a just security against them But if the Duke should certainly survive the King and could and would change our Religion they who thus discourse seem to allow it lawful to exclude him But for that they say the Duke if King will not or cannot change our Religion let every man consider his present Will and Power and how far he hath proceeded towards it before he is entred into his Kingdom These silly dreamers dishonour him whilst they pretend to serve him His Princely Virtues make him the more dreadful to a Protestant Kingdom They who thus talk make him a bad man of that bad Religion weak in his conduct and feeble in his power But how can this be when they have instructed the Nation into absolute obedience and have measured the duty of obedience by the Kings pleasure and not by Laws That the pleasure of a King is irresistable some of them will not allow passive obedience to be at all obedience Besides all caution is proportioned to the greatness of the Evils feared No wise man ever left the sum of his Affairs to Chance Where the Evils are not to be remedied or resisted when they happen the caution is just that prevents them If there be no remedy against the Evil we fear but the Exclusion the Exclusion is not onely lawful but commendable And for this we have the Authority of the Illustrious Grotius under his general Doctrine and determination Lib. 2. Cap. 1. De Jure belli ac pacis It is Engraven in Capital Letters upon the Foundation-Stones of all the Governments in the world That any person unfit for Government shall be Excluded from Governing Though Fools cannot read it until the foundations be removed and the Government subverted That his Royal Highness hath rendred himself unfit for the Government hath been declared more than once by the unanimous consent of all the States of the Realm and how far the King hath been of the same opinion may be conjectured by those Expedients that have been offered in several Parliaments by Privy-Councellors and Ministers of State and the Dukes greatest Friends Onely such were those of the late Parliaments that opposed the Bill of Exclusion but even these were for sequestring the Royal and Soveraign Powers and Authorities during the Life of a Popish Successor and to leave him content with the Name of a King onely An Indignity this both to the Name and Office a thing repugnant to the Fundamental Constitutions This tends to destroy the Monarchy it self It points directly to the Evils of the late times and would make the Parliament Sequestrators of the Crown But such absurdities those that appeared most his Friends would run us upon rather than a Popish
King and Estates of Parliament is as antient as any thing can be remembred of the Nation The attempt of altering it in all Ages accounted Treason and the punishment thereof reserved to the Parliament by 25 Edw. 3. The conservancy of the Government being not safely to be lodg'd any where but with the Government it self Offences of this kind not pardonable by the King because it is not in his power to change it This is our Government and thus it is established and for Ages and immemorial time hath thus continued a long Succession of Kings have recognized it to be such And just now when we are under the dread of a Popish Successor some of our Clergy are illuminated into a mystery that hath been concealed from the beginning of Governments to this day from the wisdom of all Princes and Ministers of State That any authority in the Government not derived from the King and that is not to yeild to his absolute Will was rebellious and against the Divine Right and Authority of Kings in the Establishment against which no usuage or prescription to the contrary or in abatement of it is to be allowed That all Rights are ambulatory and depend for their continuance upon his pleasure So that though the Reformation was made here by the Government established by Law and hath acquired civil Rights not to be altered but by the King and the three Estates These men yet speak say you as if they envied the Rights of their own Religion and had a mind to reduce the Church back again into a state and condition of being persecuted and designed she should be stripped of her Legal Immunities and Defensatives and brought back to the deplorable helpless condition of Prayers and Tears do utterly abandon and neglect all the Provisions that God's providence hath made for her protection Nay by this their new Hypothesis they put it by Divine Right into the power of a Popish Successor when he pleaseth at once by a single indisputable and irresistable Edict to destroy our Religion and Government And these opinions you say they are the more inclined to entertain for that they believe no Plot but a Presbyterian Plot for of them they believe all ill and call whom they please by that hated name and boldly avow that Popery is more eligible than Presbytery for by that they shall have greater Revenues and more Authority and Rule over the Lay-men This is a heavy Charge if true but it is imputable I am sure but to a few and not so generally as some malevolent men of the Popish Faction are industriously busie to have it For if it were I confess it might choque the constancy Resolution and Zeal of the most addicted to the service of the Church-men and make them at least very indifferent in their Concerns For these mistakes are so gross and inexcusable that they ought if they could perish by themselves to be permitted to suffer the smart of their own follies and to be corrected by the evils they are drawing down upon themselves with their own hands They deserve to suffer as betrayers of their own Country To be prosecuted with greater shame and ignominy by all of the Reformed Religion than the Traditores were by the Antient Christians These their deserting of the true Christian Faith being much less excusable than their fault that deserved that name and of greater mischief as of deeper malignity How many of the Clergy-men are thus misled we know not but they seem many more than they are because they are most in view and come often under observation frequent publick houses and talk loud because they want the Complement of their Preferments But certainly Sir what you say to be the declared Opinions of some Clergy-men is the business now of the Papists to propagate Hoc Ithacus velit magno mercantur Atridae These are agreeable to and indeed make up the most modern Project and Scheme of the Popish Plot. Since the discovery of their first Design of killing the King and massacring of the Protestants they have taken such courage by observing how little power we have to prevent their Design that they have us in scorn and in the vilest contempt They now think that we are not worth destroying but by our own hands that we are not worthy of their trouble or the charge of Executioners of their providing How entertaining is it to his Holiness to find the Church of England the impregnable Bulwark of the Reformed Religion easily fall into his hands by the unpresidented folly of some of her Sons without the trouble of attacking her either by Force or Argument which have hitherto wanted success and such attempts always attended with dishonour and mischief to his See How pleasant will it be to him to see us perish and our destruction to be from our selves With this he will answer all the irrefragable Apologies of the Church of England for her departure from the Communion of the Romish Church Then he will say with triumph our Church destroyed her self and perished by a Divine Fate for her unwarrantable and Sacrilegious Schism for so he will call our Follies and impute them to Divine infatuations The manner of our destruction will be a better Argument and of more force against the Doctrine of the Reformation than all the Arguments of all the Doctors of that Church to this day For this purpose since the Discovery of the Popish Plot it is that Sir Robert Filmers Books were Re-printed together and recommended by the Title-page and the Publick Gazet to our reading Since the Discovery of the Plot we have had variety of Books Printed to the same purpose viz To prove that all Kings as Kings are absolute by Divine Right Since the Discovery of the Popish Plot we have had men imployed to search all our antient Records and Histories to find out something more antient than our Parliaments as now constituted that it may serve as a pretence to take them away Since the Discovery of the Popish Plot we have the memory of our late calamitous War revived to raise a Panick fear of another and to make the King believe that the genius of the Nation is Rebellious and that the Protestant Religion it self is to be apprehended by Kings It is difficult to tell how that late unhappy War began or how it came to issue so Tragically in the Death of the late King though we know how it ended viz. The Nation recovered within twelve years after the most deplorable Death of that excellent King into a renowned Loyalty and in spight of a great Armed Power never before foil'd ever victorious then kept on foot for the Interest of a very few men restored our present King may his Reign be long and happy to the Government of his Kingdoms without the least assistance of any of the Cavalier-party and oblig'd a wary General in the head of a factious and republican Army to Loyalty Nay within that time also
in Concubinate and after to the Children of Eufame Ross his Legitimate Children who are to this day in their Issue by this limitation by authority of an Act of Parliament in Scotland barr'd from the Crown and we hope ever will be by the continuance of the Line of our most Gracious King Note that though a subsequent Marriage by the Civil Law which is the Law of Scotland in such cases doth Legitimate the Children born before Marriage of a Concubine yet it is with this exception that they shall not be Legitimated to the prejudice of Children born afterwards in Marriage and before the Marriage of the Concubine Besides the reason of the Civil Law in Legitimating the Children upon a subsequent Marriage is this viz. a presumption that they were begotten affectu maritali which presumption fails where the man proceeds to Marry another woman and abandons or neglects his Concubine But I desire these Gentlemen that are so unwilling to be safe in their Religion which I believe is most dear unto them That if any Law should exceed the declared measures of the Legislative Authority though in such case they may have leave to doubt of the lawfulness of such a Law yet if it be not against any express Law of God they will upon a little consideration determine it lawful if it be necessary to the Commonweal for that nothing can be the concerns of men united in any Polity but may be governed and ordered by the Laws of their Legislature for publick good for by the reason of all Political societies there is a submission made of all Rights especially of the common rights of that Community to the government of its own Laws But all this and a hundred times as much will not satisfie some Gentlemen of the lawfulness of our Government and the extent of the Legislative power of Parliaments since they have entertained a Notion that Monarchy is jure divino unalterable in its descent by any Law of man for that it is subject to none That all Kings are alike absolute That their Will is a Law to all their Subjects That Parliaments and the States of the Realm in their Conventions can be no more than the Monarchs Ministers acting under and by his appointment which he may exauctorate and turn out of office when he pleaseth For there can be say they under the Sun no obliging Authority but that of Kings to whom God hath given a plenitude of power and what is derived from them That this divine absoluteness may govern and exercise Royal Power immensely and that it is not subject to nor to be abated or restrained by any humane inventions or contrivances of men however necessary and convenient Kings have thought them in former Ages by such methods and such Offices and Officers of which number the States of the Realm may be or not be as Kings shall please as they shall by their absolute Will order or appoint Our Parliaments say they are Rebellious and an Vsurpation upon the unbounded power of Kings which belongs to every King as such Jure ordinario and by Divine institution That a mixt Monarchy as ours is is an Anarchy and that we are at present without a Government at least such as we ought to have and which God hath appointed and ordained for us That we by adhering to the present Government are Rebels to God Almighty and the Kings unlimited Power and Authority under him which no humane Constitution no not the Will and Pleasure of Kings themselves can limit or restrain for that jura ordinaria divina non recipiunt modum That the Legislative Power is solely in the King and that the business of a Parliament if they would think of being onely what they ought to be is onely to declare on the behalf of themselves and the People that send them for that purpose certainly the obedience that is due from them to such Laws as the King shall make and that they may be laid aside wholly when he pleaseth And after all this what matter 's it with them what we say our Government is hath been or where the Legislative Authority of the Nation is placed or how used But I desire these Gentlemen to consider how they come to these Notions upon what reason they are grounded How a Government established by God and Nature for all Mankind should remain a secret to all the wise good just and peaceable men of all Ages That Kings should not before this have understood their Authority when no pretences are omitted for increase of Power and enlargement of Empire I desire them to consider that this secret was not discovered to the World before the last Age and was a forerunner of our late unnatural War and is now again revived by the republishing of Sir Robert Filmer's Books since the Discovery of the Popish Plot. I wish they would consider that the reasons ought to be as clear and evident as Demonstration that will warrant them to discost from the sense of all Mankind in a matter of such weight and moment That to mistake with confidence and overweening in this matter will be an unpardonable affront to the common sence of Mankind and the greatest Violation of the Laws of modesty I desire that they would consider and rate the mischiefs that will certainly ensue upon this opinion and whether a probable reason can therefore support it That they would throughly weigh ponder and examine the reasons of these bold and new Dogmata For their enquiries ought to be in proportion diligent and strict as the matter is of moment and if they are not their errour and mistake will be very culpable and the sin of the errour aggravated to the measure of the mischief which it produceth and occasioneth Where is the Charter of Kings from God Almighty to be read or found For nothing but the declared Will of God can warrant us to destroy our Government or to give up the Rights and Liberties of our people If they are lawful I am sure it is villany to betray them since all Political Societies are framed that all may assist the common Rights of all I cannot imagine they can pretend an umbrage from the holy Scriptures for such unheard-of Opinions The Jews indeed had a Government and Laws of Gods framing and appointment and a King of their own chusing and such a King as they desired by Gods permission they had But their form of Government ought with less reason to be the rule of all kingly Governours because it was a Government chosen by themselves then the Laws of the Jews ought to be the Laws of all Nations which they are not though made and enacted by God himself Christ would not make himself a Judge in a private Right submitted to him He determined the right of the Roman Empire by the possession of Soveraign Authority and such as the whole world had made it his Disciples were obliged to acknowledge it by their obedience and
submissions which is the sum of the Apostles Doctrine in this matter The Christian Religion instituted no form of Governments but enjoyns us to be obedient to those we have not onely by express command in the case but by its general Rules of a most refined improved and extensive morality But though I said the Scriptures have not prescribed or directed any universal Form of Governments yet the Scripture hath declared the falshood of this new Hypothesis of Kingly Government to be Jure Divino or by Divine Right For St. Peter 1 Peter 2.13 and 14 stiles Kings as well as the Governours under him the ordinance of man which cannot have any other sence but that men make them and give them their powers By St. Paul the power of Governments indeed is called Gods Ordinance Romans 13.2 but that is for this reason because in general God approves of Governments as necessary to the well-being of Mankind for the improvement of humane nature for the punishing of Vice encouragement and security of Virtue without them it being impossible to live honestly and in peace And he hath made them the under-Ministers of his providence and care over Mankind and expects of them that they should promote his true Honour and worship in the world which will be always accompanied with the exercise of all civil virtues These two different places must be so understood that they may be both true and by no other interpretation can they be reconciled and made consistent It is impossible that any thing can be of mans appointment which is of Gods Ordination there can be no such thing as a Co-legislative power of Men with their Maker Government therefore is from God as he hath made Governments necessary in the general order of things but the specification thereof is from men The best definition that can be made of Government is in the words of both the Apostles put together 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and such Governments which men make God approves and requires our obedience to them upon all those reasons which make Governments necessary The natural and easie consequence and result of these Scriptures is this which I desire those Gentlemen to observe That whatsoever is not lawfully established by men no Law of God not the Christian Law doth oblige us to obey The Christian Religion doth equally condemn in the reason of its Institutions Usurpation and Contumacy Where the Apostle admonish us that if we be free we should not become Servants he hath by virtue of that Admonition made it commendable not to suffer the encroachments of Power over us Most certainly therefore as the Christian Religion doth not prejudice the Soveraign Rights of Princes such as they are in the several Forms and Models of Monarchical Governments non eripit terrestria qui regna dat coelestia as Sedulius so doth it not enlarge them when by the Gospel God made us free from his own positive Laws to the Jews sure he did not intend thereby de Jure to render us Slaves to the Arbitrary pleasure of men No man intends by any thing in the Scripture that all Mankind is obliged to any one Form of Government and therefore all men are left to their own It hath not therefore altered the terms of Government and Obedience that every Nation hath established for themselves but hath confirmed and strictly obliged the observance of them To Obedience to Government we are obliged by as many ties as there are Christian Virtues and he must disown his Christianity that departs from his due Allegiance And since our Saviour is declared King of Kings and Lord of Lords all Christian Kings are to govern in imitation of his mercy and goodness and in subserviency to the interest of his Religion and Kingdom Regum timendorum in proprios greges Reges in ipsos imperium est Jovis cuncta supercilio moventis Whence then is this absolute Authority of Kings if it come neither from God nor man Give me leave now to inform you that these opinions render you all Traytors guilty of Treason of State perduellionis rei obnoxious to be punished as Traitors by an Authority lodg'd in Parliament in the Constitution of the Government You your selves must needs condemn your selves to have forfeited all your own who hold such Principles that tend to destroy every mans Right by resolving all things into the absolute pleasure of a Monarch in which you mostly disserve the King and are contrary to his Majesties late Declaration The men of these Principles the less of the Government they are intrusted with the better for the less they have to give up and betray I confess if I could believe that this Doctrine was become Orthodox among them and the prevailing opinion of the Clergie I should conclude us to be the most unhappy people under the Sun This is an Hypothesis indeed that will bring on new Heavens and a new Earth but such wherein no Peace or Righteousness can ever dwell But I deem all such as are Defenders and Promoters of it do deserve a civil Excommunication more smarting than their Ecclesiastical and to be condemned to live upon and onely feed themselves with their thin and crude Speculations To be excluded from any share of that Government that they professedly in their Principles betray To be punished as seditious persons and most mischievous Schismaticks far more intolerable in this matter than the scrupulous Brotherhood for their boglings at an indifferent and insignificant Ceremony For that to the ruine of our Religion and destruction of the publick Peace they divide from that Polity to which by drawing here their first breath they made Faith and to which the condition of their birth doth oblige them they falsifie that which Arrian in his Epictetus calls the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 than which nothing is more sacred and inviolable By creating themselves a new Allegiance and obtruding it upon their fellow-Citizens and Members of the same Kingdom they set up a Kingdom within a Kingdom more dangerous and mischievous than the Papal Imperium in Imperio which certainly will be introduced if this Modern and monstrously-extravagant opinion can prevail by a general Credence It is criminal and no less dangerous to the being of any Polity to restrain the Legislative Authority and to entertain Principles that disable it to provide remedy against the greatest mischiefs that can happen to any Community No Government can support it self without an unlimited power in providing for the happiness of the people No Civil establishment but is controulable and alterable to the publick weal. Whatever is not of divine Institution ought to yield and submit to this power and Authority The Succession to the Crown is of a civil nature not established by any Divine Right Several Kingdoms have several Laws of Succession some are Elective others Hereditary under several Limitations All humane Constitutions are made cum sensu humanae imbecillitatis under reasonable exceptions of unforeseen accidents and emergencies
patience declared it self to be of Heaven and of a divine Original according to the Prophesies on that behalf it took possession of the Empire Crowns and Scepters became submitted to the Cross The Christians acquired a civil right of Protection and Immunity which they ought not they cannot relinquish and abandon no more than they can destroy themselves or suffer Violence and Cruelty to destroy the Innocent Such as thus perish shall never wear a Martyrs Crown but perish in the next world for perishing in this This will be interpretatively Crucifying Christ afresh after he is received up into Glory i. e. after his Religion is exalted into Dignity and Honour and civil Authority If the Senate of Rome had been Christians they would never have given up the Government to a Pagan Augustus with a power to him and his Successors to make Laws for extirpating the Christian Faith What is said of the Christian Religion and Paganism holds between the Reformed Religion and Popery If any man is so vain as to say that an unalterable course of Succession to the Crown is established amongst us by Divine Right I say he is a man fitted to believe Transubstantiation and the infallibility of the Pope he is deeply lapsed into Fanaticism he dreams when he is awake and his Dreams are Dreams of phrensie There are some things so false that they cannot be disproved as some things are so evidently true that they cannot be proved This Proposition hath no colour to ground it self upon no medium to prove it no argument for it which is to be answered nor is there any thing more absurd than it self to reduce it to But if any shall adde that this Doctrine is the Doctrine of the Reformation and adventure to tell the people so they are the most impudent falsaries that ever any Age produced when there is scarce a Child but hath heard what was done said and maintained by the Clergie of England in the Case of Mary Queen of Scots a Popish Successor in the earliest time of our Reformation here in England Our Age is blessed with a Clergie renownedly Learned and Prudent By the Providence of God and the Piety of our Ancestors they possess good though not to be envyed Revenues and Honours It is scarce possible they should have many among them that can countenance a proposition so wickedly impious and sacrilegious That we cannot have new Laws for the preservation of our Religion but must lose the old at the pleasure of a Popish Successor against not their own interest and the Rights of the Church but against the Rights and Liberty of Religion it self For she is capable of Franchises and Immunities which ought above all things to be most zealously asserted and defended by her Ministers Can they themselves with their own hands ever pull down her Hedg and destroy her Defensatives and expose her helpless to the rage of her implacable Enemies and suspend all the Legal security she hath for her preservation upon the Life of our present King whom God long preserve If Kings be admitted to have a power to make Laws one Proclamation may establish the Popish Religion amongst us which the Papal Bulls so long as that See continues will never be able to effect Next to Religion her self the Revenues of the Church challenge their faithful care for they are at best but Usu-fructuary Trustees of her Endowments for the Succession which they will wretchedly betray to an Arbitrary Successor if they do not repress such Opinions that pretend to change the Government into an absolute jure Divinity Monarchy which will leave nothing jure divino but it self and the Popedom Kings for their so doing have the authority of Sir Robert Filmer who affirms in his Treatise called the Power of Kings Fol. 1. That the Laws Ordinances Letters Patents Priviledges and Grants of Princes have no force but during their Life if they be not ratified by the express consent or at least by the sufferance of the Prince following who had a knowledge thereof This is but the necessary consequence and result from the Doctrine of the absolute power of a Prince for in such Government the Concessions of a Predecessor can no more oblige the Successor than he can Govern when he is dead and the Successor must be absolute in his time as the Predecessors were in theirs But in vain is the Net spread in the sight of any Bird this deceit is of so gross a thread that it cannot pass with the common people much less upon our Clergy But I will not dissemble what may be the true reason of the seduction of some young good-natured Gentlemen of the Clergy It is thus they perswade themselves that if these principles and opinions of the Vnlimited Power of Kings had been received the late Wars had been prevented Not rightly considering that if such opinions had never been broached or Universally rejected that War could never have ensued and we should together with peace have enjoyed our ancient Government which our Ancestors transmitted to us without that miserable inter-regnum I would not be perversely understood by any man as if I went about to justify our late War This is all I say that every Government once established will continue for ever if all the parts of it would unalterably consent to preserve it to which their natural Allegiance doth oblige them And never any Prince endeavored to change the Government but where part of the people were first willing or content to have it so Those false flatterers that go about to remove the boundaries of power and change the Government are the greatest enemies to the quiet and happy Reigns of Kings and the peace and prosperity of Kingdoms And if they do adventure to call their fellow-Subjects by any opprobrious names of disloyalty because they will not joyn with them in such change they are as absurdly impious and insolent as any Prince or State would be who should challenge another as free and absolute as himself for his Tributary and Vassal and traduce him for a troubler of the World because he would not Compose the Quarrel thus injuriously sought with the surrender of his Crown and Dignity I desire these Gentlemen to consider that the happiness of a Nation is best supported with Truth and Justice This new Doctrine is not true and whosoever entertains a belief of it is not onely barely mistaken but will be led by the mistake into the most mischievous impious and sacrilegious injustice and treachery It is very agreeable to a good man to embrace a proposition with an easie belief that offers the least seeming probability of a security against the miseries of War by all means to be avoided But this Doctrine of the Divinity of Kings is most dangerous to the Peace of Kingdoms for it is pregnant with Wars Besides that it will give bad Princes which sometime hereafter may be Born into the World for such there have been now and then power to
from Melchizedech the King of Salem who as the Learned men conjecture was Shem his Patriarch and Chief and known by him for such But because Abraham the best man perhaps in any Age did not take a Commission from Melchizedech his Patrialchal chief and yet he was blessed by Melchizedech when here turned from the War We may conclude that neither Melchizedech nor Abraham knew of any such Patriarchal Soveraignty And also from this great Example it appears that it is lawful for him that is not a Soveraign if he be not under any to make War I will not enter into a discourse whence and how is derived the Authority of making War and capital Sentences for the same reason must warrant both which hath puzled some great Divines Dr. Hammond that great man was at a loss in this enquiry and thinks that nothing but a Divine Authority can warrant them which hath put them upon strange extravagant Hypotheses of Government and sent this Knights brains a Wool-gathering But this may satisfie any man of sence That whatever is necessary for the general happiness of Mankind and for preserving peace in the World and protecting the innocent and dis-inabling the mighty oppressors is more commendable to be done than the killing a man in his own defence is simply lawful As to his second instance of Judah his Sentence pronounced upon his Daughter-in-Law Thamar which the Knight would have an exercise of Patriarchal Soveraign Authority we say how could Judah do this by a Patriarchal Power when Jacob his Father was then alive and for all that appears Judah his Son was not extrafamiliated Besides which is very unlucky Thamar was then none of his Family or of the Subjects of his Domestick Empire for his Son her Husband being dead she was free from the Law of her Husband and ceased to be a Subject of his Paternal Kingdom But Mr. Selden under the Authority of some Rabbins which he cites in his excellent Book before mentioned fol. 807. saith That Judah might have the Office of a Prince or Magistrate in a district in that Country and by that Authority might judg her according to the Laws of that Country But what the Law was and the Nature and Reason of her Offence by which it became Capital is not understood as he tells us in the place before-cited I shall not trouble the Reader with unfolding the matter But why doth he trouble himself to make Kings Fathers of their Countries Some cannot be so and some have no mind to be so and yet they ought to be Kings And some that have not been Kings have been so and so styled as the great M. Tully for defeating the Catiline-Conspiracy was by decree of the Senate called Pater Patriae Those are with reason truly called Patres Patriae which either relieve their Country from miserable pressures which is the civil death of a Nation and for this reason our King hath the honour of being called Pater Patriae and we hope that he will wear that honourable Title upon a second deliverance of us from a most deplorable condition Or else such are called Patres Patriae who bring the Nation to an exalted state of happiness so much beyond their old state of things that they seem to give the Nation a new civil Life Being and Birth For his etymological argument from the notation of the Word it is too putid to be insisted upon though not more ridiculous than his Hypothesis But for that the reduction of our duty to our King to the fifth Commandment may seem to give some advantage to this Hypothesis with Fathers who know no bounds of their power over their Children It must be obsered that the Decalogue is not a compleat Rule of Morality The Decalogue comprised the Principal Laws of that Common-wealth which God their Law-giver by a most Solemn Act of his Legislation did more awfully oblige them to observe God that time was their King Rebellion was as Idolatry and the sin of Witchcraft and the Defection of one of their Cities to Idolatry was punished as a revolt and Rebellion Deut. 13. v. 15. He had provided for his Honour and Worship and their Allegiance in the first Table and did design by the fifth Commandment to lay the Foundation of all positive morality by providing for a Reciprocation of kindnesses by enjoyning the gratitude and fitting returns of Children to their Parents and by putting Children under obligations to be taught and instructed by their Parents But our duty to Governors is more duly referred to all the other Commandments because Government secures the observation of those Laws to us by which we enjoy our selves and ours freed from the Volations of Lust Appetite Fraud and Violence We do not honour our King by relief in his fortune which is commanded to be done by our Parents in the precept of honouring them our subsidies and Aids are not to that purpose but contributions to the charges of the Government they are the just price of our immunity and protection from fraud and violence for which cause pay we tribute But whatsoever he be that hath more respect for this Knights Works than I have may find him more gently treated by a very worthy Gentleman in a very candid and judicious Book called Patriarcha non Monarcha But what is the meaning of these flattering Books they cannot but be nauseous to His Majesty who is a very wise Prince and knows how sensless such Books are and besides they make the People afraid and the Nation unquiet from the apprehensions they give that the Government will be changed Notwithstanding the King hath given such solemn assurance to the Nation by his late Declaration That we shall have frequent Parliaments and that he will govern by Law They would have had a better market for the Divinity they bestow upon Princes with Alexander after he had lost his Vertue and with those vile Emperours whose Names are Regum opprobria for such the flatterers of ancient times Deifyed those who had ceas'd to be men they made Gods and when they had left nothing about them that was tolerable they magnified their power which was already most intolerable If the Kings hereafter would but read the History of Kings under that conclusion that a wise observer of Humane Events made after a long observation and experience and would make Experiments of the truth of it in their own reading Kings would be glorious and the Nations they govern happy and full of peace They would find therein so many effectual Documents to fear God and regard men and govern them righteously It is this Si Vitam spectes hominum si denique Mores Artem vim fraudem cunct a putes agere Si propius spectes fortuna est arbitra Rerùm Nescis quid dicis sed tamen esse putas At penit us si introspicias ultima primis Connectas solus rector in orbe Deus Alciat People can be no happier than Government
and Laws design to make them though they do not always answer the good designments of the Government To what purpose then are these new Hypotheses fram'd and published Kings are exempted by their Office and the sacredness of their persons from all fears but the fears of Nature and these can never be discharged Those who do ill will fear ill eternally though their power were made little less than omnipotent for the frame of Humane Nature hath made it necessary to be so Besides God hath made one thing against another There is a divine Nemesis interwoven in the nature of things And God will always govern the World Omne sub regno duriore regnum The great Mogol at his Inauguration swears That his People shall be at peace at home and victorious abroad afflicted neither with Plague nor Famine but enjoy Health and Plenty all his days This seems extraordinary Pompous and Arrogant but it means no more than this that he will govern them so vertuously that Gods Providence shall be always propitious to his People and is no more in plain English than what our Church offers up in her publick Prayers for the King viz. That he may govern us in Wealth Peace and Godliness that he may live long and so govern us ought to be every honest mans Prayers But after all these vain Hypotheses contrived for making Kings Absolute it will be more easie for Kings to make their Reigns unquiet and turn their Kingdoms into Fields of blood But lastly to revive the ancient Zeal of the true Members of the Church of England against Popery To rectify the mistakes of some Gentlemen of the Clergy about the Dissenters And of our late Parliaments and their proceedings in reference to them Let it be considered how unreasonable their apprehensions are of any danger to the Church of England from the desires of the House of Commons of some indulgence or toleration in favour of the Dissenters at this time especially when the Protestant Religion is so shrewdly beset she hath reason now sure to take all such for her Friends that are heartily Enemies to Popery though not so skilful as they should be to ward off its assaults Since the Papists presume to call them Fanaticks though exactly conformable to the Church of England that will not assist to bring on the Popish Plot by dis-believing it and put us in fear of the Fanaticks by taking all the courses imaginable to provoke and exasperate them and to increase their discontents which they maliciously heighten and by falshood and forgeries misrepresent To graft thereupon a Pretence of a Protestant Plot for a pretext to extirpate Protestantism and introduce Popery which they impudently pretend to be of a more firm Allegiance to the Government than the Reformed Religion I pray let it be considered that that which is tolerated is put under disgrace even for that it is tolerated and that which tolerates even for that it tolerates hath the governing Authority and in so much as it indulgeth it obligeth to modesty and reason and if that indulgence should be abused it may and will be retracted It was never intended by the House of Commons that the Church of England should be altered or modelled to an agreeableness to any form or sect of the Separation or prescrib'd to by any of the Dissenters or that she should be made subject to any of their rules or opinions or her Liturgy laid aside for Directories or which is worse undervalued to the prophane way of extemporizing For as generally used and exercised it deserves no milder a stile That the Church should always govern by her own Wisdom in her own Province and in those things that appertain to her can never be deny'd her No man hath reason to say though he hath great cause to dislike the Separation and to have a bad opinion of the Dissenters that he had rather submit to Popery than to any form of the Separation for he need do neither except he pleaseth No man that thus expresseth himself but will be suspected to seek an occasion and pretence to become a Papist and to make a defection from the Church of England But if these Gentlemen have such a displeasure against Schism and Separation which certainly is the worst disease any Church can labour under and at this time threatens the destruction as well of the Protestant Religion it self as it doth to the Professors of all denominations let this sharpen their Zeal against Popery which by its unhallowed arts hath occasioned and exasperated our Schism and put them upon the use of all means to reconcile if possible the Schism that the Papists have already made and by all means endeavour to continue and take away if possible the occasion of it for the time to come And thus defeat the Arts of the Priests and Jesuits for supplanting our Church It is a most deplorable thing that our Church should be kept rent and divided in danger of being lost between Rituality and Scrupulosity Though the Scruples of the Nonconformists which I always thought and do still think groundless and unreasonable have often moved me into some passion against them yet upon consideration I think this their Scrupulosity may be of God and that some men are by him framed to it That he hath provided it as a bar and obstacle in the Natures and Complexions of some devout men against any Innovations whatsoever that dangerous ones may not steal upon the Church for the better maintaining the simplicity and purity of the Christian Religion and Worship But in saying this I have said nothing that is apt to give them a conceit of themselves but rather to humble them For the best men are not govern'd by their Temper and Constitution but correct them by their Reason and determine themselves by a clear and him Judgement What affrightment all this while either to Church or State from this weak and pityable Scrupulosity Where lyes the Treason or Sacriledge nay or so much as contumacy against our Ecclesiastical Governours which is so much upbraided to them The Christian Religion may be prejudiced by addition to as well as substraction from her rule The Church of Rome by her additions hath almost evacuated the Christian Faith Besides there may be a fineness in the outward mode of Religious Worship in it self very justifiable which may be not congenial to men of a course make The Worship of God will always favour of the manners of the people men of dull capacity can scarce admit of any Ceremonies without danger of falling into superstition or hardly escape being vext with endless and incurable scruples about them until for ease of their minds they throw them off But the wisdom of the best Law-makers hath considered in giving Laws what the people would bear and not what is best to be enjoyned and many things have been tolerated by them which they did not approve Ne majoribus malis detur occasio aut etiam
the Bill of Exclusion an Antichristian Attempt Repugnant to the Ordinance of God though God never yet made any Law or Ordinance in that Case and the Fundamental Laws of the Kingdom though no Laws of Men are so Fundamental but they are alterable The Constitution of Government is indeed unalterable by Law but no Laws but are alterable by the Government for the Government was before Laws and made and constituted most chiefly for the business of Legislation That the House of Commons assumes a Soveraign Power he knows to be false and knows too that all the world knows he is therein a Falsary What can be expected of Candour or Sincerity from a man of such Effrontery and to the making the Slander compleat he joyns Despotical to Soveraign power as if they were the same an instance of his egregious Ignorance except he flatters the King and would signifie to him that he hath despotical power because he hath a Soveraign Power and this commends him indeed for a true Patriot A Despotical Power is such as Masters use over their Servants that command what they will because they will Soveraign Power is exercised for the good of those that are governed and the Commands that come from the Soveraign Power are Laws that are deduc'd from publick Reason as they are the publick Measures and are always reasonable or pretend to be so No body ever affirmed before this Addresser to the King That it hath been the Ancient Custom of Parliaments to dispose of the Crown or that it depended upon the Suffrages of the Subjects which he falsly and maliciously adventures to say to misrepresent the most Venerable late House of Commons whose Proceedings will justifie themselves in true Story to all succeeding Generations and will we all hope be seconded and out-done by the next if the good People can keep themselves from being deceived by such Artificial men as this Addresser is But this is said and truly That a Parliament which is King Lords and Commons have declared and particularly a Parliament in the Reign of that most Excellent Princess Queen Elizabeth of Eternal Memory the wisest and greatest of the Princes that are Glorious for the Reforming the Christian Religion did declare a Power in themselves for Great and Weighty Reasons of State to alter the Succession otherwise than of course it is by Law appointed and most reasonable it is for no Government can want a Power to preserve it self and obtain its great end viz. the preservation of the Community and Polity it self and no less Reasons than these require and urge the Use and Exercise of this Power in an Act of Parliament for Excluding the D. from Succeeding to the Imperial Crown of England In order to these ends the Power of a Parliament is unrestrain'd and unlimited which this Consideration-Monger calls Scoffingly Impiously and Prophanely towards God and irreverently towards the Government Omnipotency In the next Paragraph he produceth his first Reason against the Excluding Bill And by an execrable Argument he adventures to prove That the descent of the Crown is Sacred viz. That an Attainder in Treason cannot debar the next Heir from succeeding in the Government But if the Heir had died of that Attainder the Argument had been spoiled For cannot that Power that can inflict Capital Sentences and that ought to do it against all in subjection that incur them Banish instead of Kill sure he is no true Friend to his Royal Highness whatever he pretends we will sooner admit him a true Patriot for that he makes the condition of his presumptive Heir so hard That he must either Die or Reign A very judicious Advocate and deserves very well of his Client who will remember him sure when he comes into his Kingdom for bringing him into such danger I believe this considering Patriot shifted himself in this Consideration into France where they have Princes of the Blood against whom no Criminal Process can be formed nor no Attainder of Blood is admitted to the purpose that the most enormous Crimes may not seem faults in those that participate of the blood of that haughty Tyranny But the better to disguise himself he criminates the Parliament calls the House of Commons in derision Cunning Politicians that would have a new Model of Government he chargeth them with assuming a power to depose the King and will conclude because he will and hopes the People will take his Word for it for no other reason in the world that we may as well Depose the King as foreclose a Presumptive Heir which he will call deposing him for this Ruffian-like man will not submit to the common use of Words and is at defiance with the common Sense of Mankind and will say it That it is as lawful to Depose the Possessor of the Crown as to make an Act of Parliament for preserving the Life of the present King by disabling the next Successor that brings it in danger And likens the late House of Commons upon the score of their Bill of Exclusion to the Rump Oh! for a Discoverer that would bring this man to Light and Shame and thereby to Reason and Sobriety Upon this weak and slight colour of a Reason see in the next Paragraph how he lays about him with what vehemency and expostulation and yet in his magisterial Rant the trifler could no sooner name an extravagant Bill but he thinks of a Box of Gilded Pills which if he had been lately under cure by Mr. Hobbs his Doctrine of the train of Thoughts they could not escape coming together And yet this Thinking Addresser is not altogether so happy in dividing and opposing as in compounding For he affirms that to go about to establish the Protestant Religion by a Bill to Exclude the Popish Successour is inconsistent with the Government and is to destroy the very Root and Life of Government But pray Sir for the sake of Reason tell us Doth the Government it self depend upon the person that Governs or is the Government it self changed by the alteration of the Succession may not Governments for kind the same have different modes of Succession and are not the kinds of Succession more than the kinds and forms of Government Can the Government be safe without a Power to exclude a Person inhabil in Nature to support it or of one Principled to destroy it Can we imagine a Government which is of Humane Contrivance to be without a Power to preserve it self and an Authority in Cases that threaten its Ruine to interpose with apt Remedies for its preservation That a Government made by men should be left meerly to chance and the contingency of Birth whatever happens of inability in the Persons that come under the general Rule and Limitation of Succession Doth the Exercise of this power turn the Kingdom from being Hereditary to Elective is there no difference between the inconvenience of Judging of the several Degrees of fitness in several persons competently qualified and the
Words which he useth but doth not understand of what Import and value they are in this place for the Rights of Property are of positive and civil Appointment and Institution No man can have or is entitled to any thing but what and as the Law allots it to him They design what is Right what Wrong and what is Injury and Theft and the Law of God both in the Reason and Nature of man as well as by express Revelation forbids it Nec natura potest justum secernere iniquo Men make Governments and God Commands us to obey them yea God Commands us in our Nature to form our selves into Governments For that Mankind cannot tolerably subsist without them What is greatly convenient and promotes the happiness of men therefore seems to be Commanded and thereby a positive and affirmative Law of God in Nature is declared What is or would be greatly mischievous to mankind if generally permitted is therefore understood by us prohibited The Mischief declares the thing forbidden and is the indication of a Negative Precept or prohibitory Law The pleasure and satisfaction of mind that men take in being beneficent and agreeable to and deserving well of their own kind The remorses shame fear and regret that men necessarily suffer from the sense of their own actions when they are offensive unequal and unreasonable are the Sanctions of the Laws of Nature and are truly the Rewards and Punishments of God in Nature So that Anarchy which is the most intolerable state of Mankind a state of War and Violence unreasonable Passion and unbounded Appetite seems to be the most forbidden thing by God in Nature But Government because it makes men equal and reasonable just and peaceable kind and beneficent or finds them so encourageth them to be so and protects them in being so seems to be the most principal Institution and Appointment of God in Nature for that it is recommended to us by all that which conduces to our happiness And thus and for this reason are Kings and Governours said to have their Authority from God and therefore Government is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Rom. 13.2 Gods Ordinance But the forms of Governments the Persons of the Governours the Order of Succession their respective Powers and Ministries are of Mans appointment and agreeable hereunto Government is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or a Humane Creature 1 Peter 2.13 24. to which the Apostle enjoyns us to be Obedient for the Lords sake and in Conscience of our Duty to God Agreeable hereto is that Noble Tradition amongst the Jews of the seven Precepts given by God to the Sons of Noah that is to all Mankind for from him we all secondarily derive in which the great Titles of the Law of Nature are declared and to which all the Nations of the World were obliged one of which is De Judiciis The words of the Precept which is the Seventh are no more signifying that the Law of Nature or the Will of God in Nature doth command us to live in Politys and under Governments This Law was given or declared to all Mankind when they were in a State of Nature before Governments were constituted and by that Law of Nature obliged to form themselves into Societies to enter into mutual Obligations to stand to and abide the common measures of Law and to assist and submit to the Sentences and Decrees of common Judicatures These were the first Oaths of Allegiance that were taken in the world but when a single person was entrusted with the executive power of Laws they swore this Allegiance to him For in all regular Governments as it is in this of ours the King commands nothing but according to the Prescript and Formula's of Law And the whole business of Government as between those that are to be Governed is making Laws and executing them in a due Administration of Justice As Corollaries to what is said I shall add first That Mercenary Guards are very unnatural to Governments as they seem upon the foregoing Reasons to be instituted and appointed by God in Nature which receive conformation from the Tradition and Doctrine of the Jews the best instructed Nation in the world in the Mind of God for that the whole body and power of the Government or Polity are bound to see the Law and Results of their common Judicatures obey'd and are amply sufficient for that purpose So that the head of the Polity by the posse populi being most powerfully instructed to execute the Laws Mercenary Guards seem intended and designed by those that imploy them to execute matters illegal and extrajudicial or at best they make a very hard case upon the people that they must support a great charge and pay a great price for jealousies and fears Secondly That by the natural obligation of the ancient Oath of Allegiance every Member of the Polity is bound to resist and subdue all extrajudicial Forces riotous and routous Assemblies But the nature of Government and its true original hath been prejudiced by an unhappy mistake that hath long since invaded the World men that understand nothing but Words and Grammar-Divines that without contemplating Gods Attributes or the nature of man or the reasonableness of moral Precepts have undertaken to declare the sense of Scriptures and infer that the Soveraign Power is not of Humane Institution but of Divine Appointment because they find it there written that by him Kings Reign imagining that when the Scripture saith God commands or doth this that God commanded it by express Words or doth it by an immediate position of the thing done Whereas in Nature his Commands are nothing but the natural Light God hath bestowed upon Mankind Likewise God's doing a thing is only the course of natural and second Causes to which because God gives the Direction or Motion he doth both and is said to do all that is done Besides all the Precepts that God gives us that are agreeable to the Law of Nature must be understood as Nature and Reason doth direct Videtur Lex Dei idem dictans quod natura ita accipi quomodo ipsa natura accipiendum monstrat nisi addatur aliquid Expressius Grotius Comment fol. 121. The Laws of God that confirm the Laws of men innovate nothing but a new obligation to observe them but only as commanded and intended by those that made them All humane Constitutions and Governments must be subservient and obsequious to their own intentions Omnes res conditoe famulantur vitoe humanoe Every Form of Government is of our creation and not Gods and must comply with the safety of the People in all that it can without its own dissolution and was never intended unalterable or at least inflexible but was intended and made under reservations reasonable exceptions of unforeseen accidents and rare contingencies in humane Affairs And the Law of God that comes in confirmation and establishment of humane Institutions and Laws binds only according to their natures and
pretends onely to foreclose him doth truly depose him It is insufferable that this man should impute to the House of Commons and the best People of England Diabolical Fiction the worst of all Jesuitical Equivocations and of endeavouring to make a colour to their perfidious and perjurious dealings for these reasons onely because we will not believe or take our selves to have sworn Allegiance to the Duke of York when we swore it to the King Because we will not allow that a Parliament of England which is the King Lords and Commons have no more to do with our Government than the Pope of Rome or that the Pope hath as much power to depose one of the Kings as the Parliament hath to punish a most obnoxious Subject This he dares address to the King and publish to the World He proceeds to presume and tell us that this at least must be granted that whosoever is by Bloud next Heir to the Crown we are by our Oath obliged before God to bear him Faith and true Allegiance nay to defend him against all attempts until he is disinherited by Act of Parliament and therefore says he whatsoever we do against him before this Act be fully established is a violation of our Oath and therefore the very attempt of voting and passing this Bill makes the actors and abettors Perjurers before God and the World Sure it will be allowed that this Gentleman is mistaken sure he doth not intend to speak Treason but hath a way of speaking which he will use by himself and will make Words stand for what he hath a mind to which Will and Pleasure of his this peremptory absolute man thinks himself not bound to explain though to save his Neck if he should be Indicted therefore of Treason which I desire he may and Arraigned too for the better clearing the matter if it be possible how we are now bound to bear Faith and true Allegiance to the Duke But he will sooner be Hanged than make out how a thing may be done Lawfully which is not Lawful to go about That the Duke of York may be Lawfully Dis-inherited but the Voting and Passing of the Bill must be Perjury May not he that is bound by an Oath to pay money desire a release from the Debt without Perjury Cannot all Civil Debts Duties and Contracts though confirmed by Oath be discharged by the Interested Person to whom the Duty is to be performed and for whose Benefit the Contract is made May not Kings by renouncing their Governments make the Oath of Allegiance cease to all effects of Obligation And cannot an Act of Parliament that shall disable a Successour equally prevent it from passing any Obligation upon us But shortly to explain of what Import and for what reason the words Heirs and Successors are put into the Oath of Allegiance and it is this That in case of the Demise of the King and the Devolving and vesting of the Crown upon the Heir and Successor the Oath that we took to the Predecessor by virtue of those Words laies hold upon our Consciences and obligeth us to him from the first minute of his Reign but not before and so we are not one minute free from the Bonds of our Allegiance This being the scope of the Law that requires it and of the Oath it self it must likewise be by that interpreted for finis discendi est ratio dictorum and an Oath doth not oblige as this or that man would interpret neither according to the vulgar or technical use of the Word but in such a sense as is adaequate and agreeable to the Intent and End of the proposing and requiring it But by what is said before it appears that we are not yet under the Obligation of that Oath to the Duke and that it is in the Pleasure and Power of the Parliament whether we ever shall be our Comfort is whatever he thinks that there is a great difference between Hopes and Enjoyment And further it appears that the Heir Apparent is but equivocally and in a less proper sense so and yet this Considerer who if he be not a perfect Atheist and serves a turn in this Paper must be a Papist in his heart according to the Modesty of the Gentleman chargeth us with Jesuitical Equivocations in the Oath of Allegiance while in the mean time he is equivocating the King out of his Throne shifting the Duke into his place by an aequivocal Abuse of the word the coursest slight that ever was used by any Hocus Pocus or any Pretender to Legerdemain And yet upon the Confidence of these weak and mistaken Reasonings he presumes to arraign the House of Commons of the greatest Injustice and Iniquity and would have us apprehend Slavery the Arbitrary and Despotical Power of Parliaments The loss of all Security either of Property or Liberty by a prevailing Faction of Parliament which he will be able to effect at the same time when he can perswade us to dissolve the Polity and exchange the best and safest Government into an Anarchy To be without Judges for fear of unrighteous Sentences and without a Power of Legislation for fear of Laws of Iniquity But it is not a new thing for obnoxious Criminals and Out-laws to turn Rebels against Government What this man is and what the Cause is he Espouses is declared sufficiently in that he hath no better ways of Advocation and Defence than by Opposing and Reviling the Government it self and he that dares revile the Government would if he had Power Destroy it In that he calls the major part of the House of Commons a Prevailing Faction I challenge him Guilty of the Highest Treason of a Treason not onely against this Government but of a transcendent Treason of a Treason virtually against all mankind for that we cannot subsist without Polities and no Polities can subsist but by deference to the results of the Governing Power which is Interpretatively in the resolves of the major part But he proceeds to question whether by the Constitutions of this Government the Parliament can extend their power to shut out the Duke from succeeding to the Crown for admitting he means That it is Just which we will not accept of as a voluntary concession of this Considerer for that it doth appear not onely Just but highly necessary to exclude the Duke by Bill he will then draw it into question Whether there be any competent power in the Government for doing a thing not onely just but absolutely necessary for the preservation of the King and Kingdom Whether there be any Subject too great for Justice or any private Right that is not governable and may not be ordered as to the Legislature shall seem necessary to the preservation of the whole Whether that which is properly the Right of the Community for so is the Succession may receive no alteration in a single instance for the Weightiest Reasons and whether he that declares that he will not Govern but Destroy
so long in animadverting upon this last passage but that I think our Considerer hath taken into his assistance in these Considerations some Divine by his abounding so much in Scriptural Allegations And that hereby you may see the Size of the rest of the men of that Order that are Chaplains to the Cause of the Succession and that they ought to be of little regard in this matter as they deserve none it being not in their way though in matters that belong properly to their Function they may deserve much who are of the meanest of that Order Our Gentleman next proceeds to his political Arguments but those can be answered I perswade my self by every man who hath heard of the Plot. Though a man of his Size may frame puzzling Arguments that may perplex mens Minds with scruples and doubts which a Fool may do and a Wise man cannot remove yet it is scarce possible for him to deprive men of their Senses and make them insensible to all the Evils that they hear see and feel and justly fear If the Protestants are not as he saith very strong abroad we have reason to be more united at home and united by the awful Authority of a Law If we are threatned with a great power of the Roman Religion from abroad which he affrights us with we have no reason to retain the biggest power to hurt us within our own Bowels But if it be in the power of such bad men as this Pretender to divide by slights and wiles the good People of England and keep them from uniting in the onely means of their safety we must perish But Wo be to them by whom we are thus destroyed His last effort upon the minds of the People is to intimidate them that by their fears they may fall under the evils they design upon us he scatters his menaces as if he were in the place of God against us and as if he had the executing of the Plot in his Power and tells us of sins that fit us for ruine It is convenient to these Plotters to imagine us mighty wicked that they may believe we deserve the Vengeance they design Our Government it self our Laws our Religion must become wicked when they arrive to a probable power to hurt us They never contrive a Gunpowder Plot a Massacre or burning a City but they dream the iniquity of the People is grown ripe They would turn us into Sodom and Gomorrha which this Considerer frights us with if they could call for Fire from Heaven and then publish us to all the world if we were much better than we are to be as wicked as the Cities of the Plain If we cannot obtain this Bill I shall then begin to think that the Decree is gone forth and our Fate is approaching and that God will let these Villains have their will over us By Gods displeasure not theirs I shall take the true measures of our Sins His displeasure will be remarkable and evident if he seems to deny us the means of our Safety and Preservation and which is the onely means of the Kings Salvation from their Traiterous design If this Bill do not pass they will take him for a wicked King too and they will say he hath no lawful Issue to succeed him for his own sins though our Considerer saith at present that our Sins are the cause of it and many other remarks of wickedness they will make upon him when they find it convenient and for their interest to destroy him at best he will be then but Tenant at Will to them of his Life as well as his Crown which this Considerer most slanderously chargeth to be designed by us but if he will follow the counsel of that excellent Bill he may live long and see good days and peace upon our Israel to which let all good people say AMEN I shall onely remark two or three things in the close of the Paper of Weighty Considerations First that he undertakes to say and affirm that the King is as much subject to the Power of the Parliament as the Duke which doth dethrone the King himself and lessens him to the degree of a Subject Secondly that in this his Address he perswades the King to rend the Government to lay aside the Commons of England and abandon them as Rebels to divide from them and govern by a House of Lords and Privy Council And thirdly that the most venerable and Loyal Parliament that ever was conven'd in this Nation though not so clearly purged from the corrupt Villains of the late long Parliament as the next we hope will be are charged by him to follow the Anarchical Encroachments of the Factions in the Rump-Parliament by which he insinuates that we must become Papists admit of a Popish Successor or be used as Rebels and Traitors by these three Remarks it is evident what Principles and Designs these men are of that oppose the Dukes Bill and from thence you may find reason to assist it and promote it with the greatest unanimity and resolution and the rather for that the Duke himself cannot want Considerations to dispose him to approve of it For what should he do with a Crown that he cannot wear Why should he accept of a trust that he cannot discharge and a Government that his Principles oblige him to transfer to a Forein Prince he is too generous a Prince to enter upon a Province onely to betray it He is a Prince of great Charity it was that surely mov'd him publickly to confess the Roman Religion that he might thereby recommend that Religion to our belief for the better reforming us from Heresie Why then should not the same Charity move him to renounce the Government lest he should offer an irresistable temptation to the People to a Rebellion a greater sin accounted by a King though a Catholick however the Priests rate it than an errour in belief But how can we imagine that he will condescend to be our King He doth not intend to accept of our Oaths of Allegiance and had rather not be King than we should be his Subjects upon those terms Why should we trouble him with the name of King reproach him call him Apostate Heretick and Infidel by swearing our selves his Subjects in the terms of the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy Pray think no more of it write no more Great and Weighty Considerations for he intends to be no more your King than he doth to desert his Religion and the Roman Catholick Faith Besides his Zeal and Services and the Difficulties that he hath undergone for that Church and the hazards he hath incur'd deserve the best Place and highest Office in that Church which is that of a Priest he ought not to be put off and meanly rewarded with the Sheriffalties which their Eminencies of the Conclave despise and be prefer'd to all the Drudgeries and Cruelties that the Priesthood of that Church require of the Kings of that Communion that
whatsoever created by the same Act of Parliament From whence it followes that the Earl of Danby if he were next Heir might succeed if he should be attained of Treason of State by Parliament wheras if the King cannot pardon him as he cannot he could not in that case of the descent of the Crown pardon himself The Heir of the Crown attainted upon the devolving of the Crown upon him is therefore purged from the Attainder because he can pardon himself and is intended to do so but a Treason of State can never be pardoned by the King Our young Lawyer knows well enough that an incapacity by Act of Parliament to execute an Office growing upon a moral disability of executing the trust of that Office is not in the Kings power to pardon Secondly from hence it follows that that Attainder which leaves a capacity to obtain a Pardon of the King doth not at all differ from an Attainder that excludes all capacity from the King to pardon and which in the Constitution of the Government he hath no power to pardon such are all Treasons of State where the King is not the Pars laesa and where it is not a private wrong a single crime but the attempt is upon the whole Government Thirdly hence it clearly follows that he that is no King and upon whom the Crown can never descend as it will not if this Bill passeth into an Act he being without the Imperial Crown without right and without possession of it is yet a King That there is no difference between an Act of Parliament which leaves the Successor to a possibility of being purged from the Attainder it makes and that Act of Parliament which leaves no such possibility qut doth most absolutely and expresly exclude him His Positions must therefore be false and his Arguments not concluding from which such notorious falshoods and absurdities are naturally infer'd Instead of further argument he tells us a matter of Fact of an Act of Parliament made 28 H. 8. cap. 7. to render Queen Elizabeth incapable of Succession And that she notwithstanding got into the Throne And that Sir Nicholas Bacon who had consulted the Judges told the Queen that there needed no formal Repeal of the said Act for that Corona semel suscepta omnes omnino desectus tollit The Consequence of this is that if the Duke can notwithstanding an Act for his Exclusion get into the Thhone he will and so let him Secondly that a King de facto though a bad one is not to be removed at the expence of a Civil War that it is madness to part with a good one when in possession and cruelty to the People Detrahere Dominum urbi servire parata But afterwards in the 35 of Hen. the Eighth the Crown was limited by Act of Parliament in case the King and Prince Edward should die without Heirs of ether of their Bodies to the Lady Mary and the Heirs of her body and for want of such Heir to the Lady Elizabeth and the Heirs of her body We are no ways concerned in the justification of our Bill to approve of the humorous Caprice of Henry the Eighth and the arbitrary Laws that he made in his time about the Succession they are instances of his haughty Government that he imposed upon Parliaments and that he took the Crown to be at his dispose and transferrable at his pleasure as his Money and Lands a great indignity to Mankind and an injury to the nature of Government But that the Succession of the Crown is the right of the whole Community their Appointment their Constitution and Creature in Parliament and alterable as far the Bill designs and for such reasons as presseth and urgeth in the Case of the Duke Whether this I say is not to satisfaction proved in these Sheets and whether this Epistoler hath produced any shadow of Reason to prove the contrary let the World judge And whether he hath given us any thing for reason but the insignificant bluster of Words canting Language and pedantick Nonsence which will never pass with any man of the least spark of sence for Argument Neither do we place the Right of Succession to Government in the same rank with private Inheritances nor ever were they governed in any Country by the same Rules though this Epistoler hath produced the Laws of God by Moses to the Jews which was only to govern private Inheritances amongst them to prove the unalterable Succession of the Crown amongst us which is so wild an impertinence wherewtih he begins his Letter that he will be ashamed of it when he reviews it and conceal his name for ever with care That there is one Rule for the Succession of the Crown and another for the Succession of private Estates is from these Reason That private Inheritances are disposed of in Succession according to the presumed Will of the Decedens which is collected from the general Opinion and Practice of the people in disposing of their Estates by Settlements or by their Wills and Testaments in case of Allodiums or else the Succession goes according to the direction and limitation of the Lord made in the first collation of the Fee in case of Fees But the Descent and Succession of the Crown is governed and directed by the presumed Will of the People and that presumption of the Peoples Will is made by measuring and considering what is most expedient to the publick good or by the express limitation of the People in their conferring the Royal Dignity In Allodiums in defect of Heirs the Inheritance belongs to the Soveraign Power as a thing that is Nullius in bonis and hath no owner In Fees when the Family is extinct it Escheats to the Lord of the Fee In Crowns upon the extinction of the Royal Family it belongs to the People to make a new King under what limitations they please or to make none for the Polity is not destroyed if there be no King appointed and consequently in case of this cesser or discontinuance of the Regnum there may be Treason committed against the people That the Succession of the Crown is directed according to the presumed Will of the People and collected from what is most expedient gives us the reason why one Daughter or Female of the next degree shall succeed to the Crown and not all if more than one whereas a private Inheritance is equally divided amongst them all For it is the Interest and therefore the presumed Will of the People that the Kingdom should continue undivided The strength of the Kingdom is preserved in being continued united and the Peace and Concord of the People thereby establed That a Son by the Second Venter shall succeed to the Crown which is not allowed in private Estates is because one so born is equally of the Family of his Father and the expectation of the people as great from him being descended from that glorious Person upon whom the Crown was conferred by the
people or who after he had got into the Throne obtained the submissions of the People The same reason admits an Alien born though he be estranged from us by his Birth Est in Juvencis est in equis patrum vertus Though what I have said in this matter is so obvious that no considering man can escape these thoughts yet I cannot think it impertinent to add it here to clear what I have laid down in the precedent Sheets as an undoubted truth and evident in it self That the Succession to the Crown is the peoples Right But there is nothing I perceive to be allowed clear and evident when we live in an Age wherein Fools and most ignorant persons will undertake by the Liberty of the Press to print and publish to the world their crude thoughts and with great assurance offer their uncouth Opinions with astonishing presumption Besides to the reasonableness of this Doctrine it is agreeable to the Illustrious Grotius De Jure Belli Pacis Lib. 2. cap. 7. And nothing follows from his collected Law-cases about the different Rules of Succession of the Crown from private Fees but that he is a very young Lawyer or an old senseless Jobber of Law-Cases But I hope that all men that read him will with resentment think themselves used with scorn when they see what frivolous Fellows attempt upon them to deceive them and will be fully convinced that the Bill is reasonable just and fit since they have nothing better to object against it The last endeavour of the Epistoler is to remove the Authority of Parliaments and the Act made in the Thirteenth of Queen Elizabeth The words of which are printed at the close of the Papers against the man of Great and Weighty Considerations Our case is not in its reasons unparallel to those that introduced that Law and occasioned the making of that Declaration but whatever was the particular Reason the Declaration of that Parliament in that Act is general and therefore it is an Authority not to be impeached to prove that there is such a power to alter the Succession of the Crown for great Ends and weighty Reasons and just Causes Besides that such a power is lodged in the Parliament is clearly proved by us from the nature of Government in the foregoing Sheets As also that such a power will not be abused by using it in this Bill of Exclusion of which I hope no body upon the reading of them will retain any longer any manner of doubt But I cannot before I have done but take notice of his little Artifice in that he doth suggest that by the Act of Parliament of the Thirteenth of Queen Elizabeth cap 1. the Title of the Family of Stuarts is excluded when it is evident by the words of the Act that the Disability there enacted is only personal And his story of Monsieur the Duke of Anjou designing then to marry the Queen is a false and malicious insinuation to hurt the memory of that excellent Princess And consequently that King James and his Race had and have notwithstanding the validity of that Act a good Title to the Crown And that the validity of that Act may be maintained without derogation and injury to his Majesties sacred Title whom God long preserve A short Historical Collection touching the SUCCESSION of the CROWN WHether the History of the Succession of the Crown will allow so good and clear an Hereditary Right Jure humano as we have yielded in the precedent discourse the Reader will best judge by the short Historical Collection touching the Succession hereto subjoyned In the Heptarchy there was no fit Hereditary Right one King tripping up the heels of another as he had power till one got all After that Alfred Bastard-son to Oswin Adelstane Bastard-son of Edward the Elder Edmund Surnamed the Martyr Bastard-son to King Edgar Harold Surnamed Harefoot Bastard-son to Canute wore the Imperial Crown of England But a Law was made under the Saxon Monarchy De Oodinatione Regum directing the Election of Kings and prohibiting Bastards to be chosen Edward the Confessor was no King Jure Haereditario but the right was most indisputable at first in Edward Son of Edmond Ironside Father to Edgar Etheling his Nephew during his life and after his decease in that Edgar who was Nephew also to the Confessor William the First called the Conquerour was a Bastard and had no right but from his Sword and the Peoples Suhmissions and their Electing him William Rufus was elected against the right of his Elder Brother Robert then living Henry the First was made King favenle Clero Populo his Brother Robert still living whose Eyes were after put out at Cardiss-Castle in Wales King Stephen was elected a Clero Populo and confirmed by the Pope and Maud Daughter of Henry the First excluded Henry the Second came in by consent yet he had no Hereditary right for his Mother Maud the Empress Daughter and Heir to Henry the First was then living King John had an elder Brother Jeoffery Earl of Brittany who had Issue Arthur and Elianor which ought to have succeeded before him but he Arthur his Eldest Brother's Son living was elected a Clero Populo and being divorced from his Wife by his new Queen had Henry the Third Henry the Third was confirmed and setled in the Kingdom by the general Election of the people Elianor Daughter to Jeoffery the elder Brother still living Roger Mortimer Earl of March Son of Edmund by Philippa Daughter and Heir of Lionel Duke Clarence a younger Son of Edward the Third was in the Parliament 9 R. 2. declared Heir Apparent of the Crown which could not be but by force of an Act of Parliament Henry the Fourth came to the Crown by way of Election and in his time viz. in the eighth year of his Reign was the first Act of Parliament made for Entailing the Crown with Remainders By vertue of which his Son Henry the Fifth became King and after him Henry the Sixth In Henry the Sixth his time Richard Duke of York claimed the Crown and an Act of Parliament was made 39 H. 6. that Henry the Sixth should enjoy the Crown for his life and the said Duke and his Heirs after him After which King Henry raises an Army by the assistance of the Queen and Prince and at Wakefield in Battle kills the Duke for which 1 Edw. 4. they were all by Act of Parliament attainted of Treason and one principal reason thereof was for that the Duke being declared Heir to the Crown after Henry by Act of Parliament they had kill'd him which Act of Attainder was 1 H. 7. repealed and the Blood of the King Queen and Prince restored in terms of disgrace and detestation of so barbarous an Attainder Rot. Palr Anno 1 H. 7. Edward the Fourth succeeds upon the death of H. 6. by vertue of an Act of Parliament made in the time of H. 6. for entailing the Crown as Son
and Heir to the Duke of York Edward the Fifth succeeded by vertue of the same Act of Entail Richard the Third having got the Crown he was confirmed King by Act of Parliament which likewise Entail'd the Crown which was done upon two reasons pretended First for that by reason of a precontract of Edward the Fourth Edward the Fifth his eldest Son and all his other Children were declared Bastards Secondly for that the Son of the Duke of Clarence second Brother to Edward the Fourth had no right because the Duke was attainted of Treason by a Parliament of Edward the Fourth The Act of Parliament for Bastardizing the Children of Edward the Fourth was in force until repealed in the time of Henry the Seventh after his Marriage with Elizabeth the Daughter of Edward the Fourth Henry the Seventh comes in by no legal Title First because Edw. 4th his Daughter was then living Secondly his own Mother was then living In his first Parliament the Crown was Entail'd upon him and the Heirs of his body And observable it is that after the death of Elizabeth his Queen Daughter and Heir to Ed. 4th there is no notice taken of any right which was pretended to by Hen. 8. during his Fathir's life as being Son and Heir of his Mother who had the legal Right to the Crown by an ordinary right of Succession Henry the Eighth Succeeded who did as all his Laws speak derive his Title to the Crown by the Fathers side and not by the Mothers In his Reign the Crown was Entail'd thrice by Act of Parliament Confirm'd by the general Oaths both of the Spiritualty and the Lasty and it was made High Treason to refuse such Oaths and several Attainders were in his time by particular Acts of parliament of several persons who opposed such limitations of the Crown and the authority of the Laws that made them But the great Law of the three was made in the 35th year of his Reign Cap. 1. whereby power was given him to give and dispose by his Letters Patents or by Will the Imperial Crown of the Realm to remain and come after his death for want of lawful Heirs of Prince Edward the Lady Mary and the Lady Elizabeth to such person or persons in remainder or reversion as should please his Highness In which Act there was a Clause that made it high Treason to speak or write against that Act or to go about to annul or repeal it Besides there is another Proviso in that Act That if the Lady Mary should not keep such conditions which the King should declare by his Letters Patents or last Will the Imperial Crown should come to the Lady Elizabeth And if the Lady Elizabeth should not observe the same then the Crown was to go to such person as the King by his Letters Patents or last Will should limit and appoint By virtue of which limitation in the Act of Parliament afore-mentioned Edward the Sixth succeeded to the Crown and after him Queen Mary in whose Reign in an Act of Parliament for Conformation of the Articles of Marriage between her and Philip of Spain the Crown was again Entail'd but she dying without Issue the Lady Elizabeth became Queen who had been declared a Bastard as well as her Sister Mary in the life of their Father and therefore succeeded to the Crown by force of the Entail made in the 35 H. 8. Cap. 1. Pursuant to these Presidents in fact in the 13. year of the Reign of Q. Eliz. an Act of Parliament was made declaratory of the power of Parliament in the limitation of the Succession which made it highly penal to deny the Authority of an Act of Parliament for the limitation of the Crown Several persons in her time were proceeded against upon that Act and had the Judgement of Traytor and as Traitors executed for being contrary to that Law This Queen dying King James succeeded who was as the Statute of Recognition made in Parliament the first year of his Reign declares lineally rightfully descended of the most excellent Lady Margaret eldest Daughter of the most renowned Henry the 7th and the high and Noble Princess Queen Elizabeth his Wife eldest Daughter of King Edward the 4th the said Lady Margaret being eldest Sister of King Henry the 8th Father of the High and mighty Princes of famous memory Elizabeth late Queen of England It is further observable that upon the Marriage of Queen Mary to King Philip of Spain both the Crowns of Emgland and Spain were entailed whereby it was provided that of the several Children to be begotten upon the Queen one was to have the Crown of England another Spain another the Low Countries The Articles of Marriage to this purpose were confirmed by Act of Parliament and the Pope's Bull. And by that Act of Parliament for confirming the Articles of Marriage Philip was created King and did exercise Soveraign Authority and particularly in making Laws together with the Queen the Stile of the Soveraign Assent to Bills in Parliament in their time being Le Roy la Roigne les veulent And likewise for that it was agreed by the States of both Kingdomes and the Low Countries it is therefore probable that it was the Universal opinion of the great men of that Age That Kings and Soveraign Princes by and with the consent of their States had a power to alter and bind the Succession of the Crown FINIS