communicate with us in all that is Lawful Now it is actual Communion in all publick Offices and Worship which you require from us and the reason you give why we should pay it is in the words before cited the sence of which must be that your Church is ready with a Remonstrance to afford the same Communion to the Church of Rome that is Actual Communion in Publick Worship So with an insignificant Remonstrance you can go to Mass and are willing to do it See this and a great deal more such stuff in T. B's 2d Lett. p. 12 13. Eucher This is indeed a notable fetch that I should excite you to rejoyce with us for Redemption from Popery and yet profess a readiness and desire to communicate in it and in that very communion to remonstrate against it This no doubt would be a very pleasant way of accordance with the Roman Forms and yet at last when I invited you to Communicate with us in all that is Lawful I meant only what you think Lawful what is by us both confessed Lawful not to what we only think Lawful against your opinion and to this end * Sol. Ab. p. 3. that you might the better heal what you think we do amiss and so much agreement I confess we owe to all that is good in the Church of Rome and by us acknowledged for such as well by them But that I invited you not to any actual Communion in any thing you judge Unlawful while you judge it so appears in that I required not your presence to * Ibid. page 15. that Prayer of New Allegiance on the 29th of May while you are under the perswasions of its Impiety But in truth having as I thought proved us not to be actually Unchurched I willed that you should yield us so much Communion as may signifie your acknowledgement that we are yet of the Church of Christ viz. in all those Offices which you can Judge Good and Lawful in order to an easier accommodation for so I presume of this Church and of you too that you would not refuse any good Ecclesiastical Negotiations which import some though not a plenary Communion with the Church of Rome in order to a Restitution of the Churches of Christendom to a Primitive Frame were the Church of Rome disposeable thereto And they that will deny this to any corrupt Churches I think are not real Christians nor so much as externally qualified Members of the Church Catholick and to this innocent purpose and consequence only were my words so exactly ordered with a design to stave off all Catches herein that nothing but an inexcusably wretched spite and bitterness could have hewn out of them so perverse and undesigned a construction Dyscher I am not satisfied that you will allow our Deprivation to be a Persecution only on supposition that it be for adherence to the Doctrines of the Church or the Laws of God What if neither the Laws of God nor the Church had been concerned and they had had only occasion to stand to the Laws and Constitutions of the Land which forbid force against and Deposition of Kings and exclusion of the Heir I think this had been no ill Cause c. T. B's 2d Lett. Eucher I did not mention the Laws of the Land because till they are Authentically Vacated the Laws of God and the Doctrines of our Church do assert their obligation on our obedience so far as it is in our power to perform it and a voluntary violation of the Laws and Constitutions of Civil Government is a violation of the Laws of God which the Church Preaches in her Doctrine Therefore I allow you that adherence to the permanent obligation of the standing laws of the Land is a good Cause for the maintenance whereof all Sufferings are Persecutions and all the voluntary Agents in them Persecutors But if the reason or obligation of any Law ceaseth or if you mis-understand Laws and will oppose your private Judgment on them against the received and constant Judgment and Practice of the Nation on our Laws then your Sufferings upon such Prejudices cannot come under that black Character which is a thing enquireable between you and me Dyscher Then I take it for a very odd demand that we must give in a very clear proof that we are Ejected for adhereing to the Laws of God I pray who are they that ought to bring this clear proof I have heard some say that it is an Axiom in Law that they who expect the benefit ought to make the Proof Now you get all into your hands and would you give no Reason for it And yet it would be but to little purpose to prove to a Thief that he has stolen my Goods T. B's 2d Lett. p. 14. Eucher But do you not consider that in Law and Reason whoever accuses any man before a Judge ought to prove his Bill if the Accused plead Not Guilty And you by complaining to the World of the wrong done to K. James and the Deprived Appeal not to them whom you account Thieves but to all others to avoid their Communion Now to draw off all People from their Communion it is necessary to prove their actions Illegal according to the Laws of Tenure in the Crown and the Ecclesiastical Promotions since they whom you implead challenge those Laws for their Justification And further by your leave he that is out of Possession but lays a claim of Right and expects the benefit of it ought to prove his Claim and the Possession of the Adversary injurious For they that are in peaceable or legal form of Possession have no need to make nor consequently to prove a Claim if not disproved Beside your Case is not concerned meerly in your own personal Right but in the Consciences and Salvation of other mens Souls even of those whom you call Thieves and therefore you are obliged to convince them of the unlawfulness of such Changes which they think lawful and not only so but in the present circumstances necessary Dyscher But I will further examin your own Proposals and Concessions herein * Sol. Ab. p. 4. An untainted Loyalty you approve while the Obligation lasts and we desire no more But then you think the Obligation may cease not only by Death or Resignation but also by Cession Nor do I think it worth while to dispute this with you provided it be real not forced not falsly imputed For so any man that is driven out of his House or takes a Journey from Home may be interpreted to have quitted his Estate by Cession But when Cession is real it can only affect the Party who makes it and ought to be no injury to the next Heir But has that person made a Cession who tho' to preserve his Life he fly from fraud and irresistible force yet all the while claims his right calls on all persons to do him justice and useth all honest means that may be to
King had prejudged against all the Argument for Abdication and had been a virtual Sentence that he had not abdicated And they could not well have resumed that debate without rejecting his Letters after reading and censuring their own admission of them which would more justly have exposed their Wisdom and offended you than the measures which they observed But after judgment past for the Abdication they could not admit his Letters under the Royal Style because they had judged that he was not our then King and so the Admission of his Letters as their Kings had been a virtual Reverse of that their Judgment in the same Session and Breath by which they had rendred themselves if not altogether incompetent yet very injudicious Judges And if after Judgment against his then Sovereignty they had sent to him under the style and salutation of late King and have made him King a-new had it not been a wise Transaction much to their Credit Thanks and the Nations Interest So much then for the Conspiracy Next for the Authority which you say was none since no National Subjects of a Sovereign Monarch can be his Judges And by Mr. Johnson's leave I will say so too and did say so * Sol. Ab. p. 4. most expresly tho' you in great sincerity take no notice of it because it it seems it was not considerable enough But is it not a very considerable Assertion That when a King is fled from his Throne into foreign Dominions and doth not exert any Royal Power or presence to his People the Estates of this Land are the Supreme Domestick Judges upon the Tenure of the Sovereignty which is not to make them Judges of the Kings Person but in the want of his Person of the State of the Kingdom and the Rights of the Nation in Order to Settlement And can you either disprove this saying or charge it or me with Regicide Principles Clamat Melicerta periisse frontem de rebus may well deserve your remembrance here especially since I told you * Ibid. p. 9. that King James was never in Law subject to them or under their Power But as to the Authority of the Estates to convene when there is no King actually regnant you may learn if you please that tho' the Estates were created by Kings yet their Rights and Charters are perpetual and constituted for a fundamental Council to the Land under the King while we have one governing but when we have none authoritative of themselves to resettle the Nation the best manner they in their judgment may or can And this right they have in common with all the like Orders of Estates in all other Kingdoms otherwise the Nation would not have been so earnest for a Free Parliament when that liberty was opened to them by General Monks Conduct Dyscher I shall talk with you about that Parliament by and by And when I have told you That your second Parliament hath no more Authority than your Hocus Pocus transubstantiating Convention that riotous Assembly all whose Acts were contrary to Law and censurable by Law and so cannot confirm them I will examin your grave Position That when a King is fled from his Throne into foreign Dominions or doth not exert any Royal Power or Presence to his People the Estates of this Land are the Supream Domestick Judges upon the Tenure of the Sovereignty But am I bound to follow their Judgment against manifest Right and my known Duty T. B's 2d Lett. Eucher No no by no means but in such a Crisis you have no other known Duty toward any Settlement but to abide by that which they establish in the Land for the time being for that all Rights and Duties then debatable are in such junctures determinable by them to all Civil Effects and Obligations and therefore their Judgments ought not to be opposed by any slanders or factions whatsoever even tho' King James from abroad condemns them Por a Foreign Censure is no Civil Judgement and by consequence of no legal validity or virtue Kings sometimes suffer wrong but whensoever by these sufferings they are removed from their People the Estates must provide for the Nation as they can and as they do we must be content nor has the suffering King any Right to engage us from abroad to the contrary And this Authority even without a King is so full in it self that it needs no Ratification on the post-fact to make its Acts obliging or effectual tho' such a declarative sort of Ratification as our second Parliament made be of use to satisfie unsetled minds and second a former Obligation which was what I had respect to when I said We are the more to submit to the proceedings of the Convention and first Parliament since the Kingdom hath ratified their proceedings in a second viz. by a Declarative Recognition and reinforcement of their legality and virtue Dyscher After all your considerable Assertions are but a malicious insinuation against your suffering King as if he ran away thro' wantonness and would have nothing to do with us T. B's 2d Lett. p. 17. And herein Mr. Johnson seems more sincere in his wickedness than your Dawbers For he tells your Parliament that there was no Desertion * Pres to the Commons before his Argument p. 16. For King James must needs go and leaves us to understand the rest of the Proverb by an Aposiopesis that he was Devil driven And so far speaks plain as to say That he was as much driven from England as Nebuchadnezzar was driven to Grass and he claimed as he fled by the Rochester Letter And he further shews * Ibid. p. 19. That no advantage could be taken of a Kings withdrawing himself from the Government if it had been voluntary as all the World knows it was not without a Summons sent after him to return again in forty days And therefore he roundly professes that the people abrogated their King after his Expulsion And whence is it then that he exerts not his power You know he exerts all the power he can that he doth not more is not his fault but yours you may have both his Power and Presence among you too if you please But will you contrary to your Duty and Oaths keep him out by force of Arms and then plead your own wickedness in your Defence T. B's 2d Lett. p. 17. Eucher Mr. Johnson falsly owns the fact you charge upon the Nation for the sake of his Principle which his spite to all Kings and Kingly Power has cast him into viz. That the People may Depose their Kings as often as they judge them Peccant which is almost as often as they please But 't is notorious that the Estates judged the Throne made Vacant not by their Act of Abrogation but the Kings own Abdication which if so all the world knows it must be in some degree Voluntary Now here will I challenge Mr. Johnson to say out Does that claim of the then
subsequent Ratification or Power of Revocation by their Principals Dyscher But notwithstanding all pretences they ought to have recalled King James and it being in their Pawer to do it 't was piacular wickedness to omit it and erect his Adversary this is obvious to common Sense and the first simple Notions of Right and Wrong against which no civil forms or combinations can oblige Eucher You are no competent Judge upon them or us what Right required them to do in their then exigencies and if in truth they could not do what you would have had them nor well and safely do otherwise than they did then all this black Charge turns to a blanck and comes to nothing Now 't is true the Prince had no setled or proper Jurisdiction or legal Authority strictly taken to enforce a Convention or any thing upon it nay they had liberty before the judgment of Abdication to have voted King James's Revocation But if they had done so and the Prince in bar thereto had pleaded the Desertion to have been an Abdication devolving the Title to his Princess according to the ordinary and legal course and so had required them to dissolve if they had dissolved what could such vote have effected If they had not dissolved the refusal might have opened a Scene of War between the Prince and the two Houses And considering how great the even minor number in the Houses which might have sided with the Prince would have been and the vast and zealous Army which he had about him with all the formed advantages and preparations of War together with the hearts of at least the general multitude are you sure that the naked Majority of the Convention could have safely adventured the dispute with cold Iron Or if upon a casual adventure they had been conquered how could they have evaded the Prince's Arbitrary Power Or if during the War King James or the French had supervened and carried it had not all the Laws and Liberties of the Nation dipt and sunk under Absolute and Popish Power and that most probably French or a la mode de France All this is obvious to common Sense and was undoubtedly much more so to that National Assembly which otherwise wisely composed all Domestick Riots as well as secured us from foreign Inrodes and little deserve the reproach of Riotous or Juglers which manners to your own deprived Fathers and other your Friends that sate there should have taught you to forbear Dyscher Whereas you tell us 't is a prodigious peevishness to require a Kings Presence or Commission when he is gone and hath left all in Anarchy I hope Sir you do not think I require a King to be present when he is absent and then with your good leave I think it no such peevishness to act by his Commission in his absence but that it is a thing which if it can be had ought rather to be done Richard the First was engaged in the Holy War when his Father died * This is false for he was King before he went and deputed the Bishop of Ely Chief Governor It was Edward the First that was proclaimed King while in the Holy Land but he was never Prisoner so that he was far enough from his Throne and unable to exert any Royal Power or Presence to his People And to make the matter worse in his return he was taken Prisoner and detained in Germany In this Case had you been one of the Estates you would have been for setting up another King that would exert his Royal Power and Presence to his People but they had another sense of their Duty they mourned under the common Calamity caused all proceedings to pass under his Nane and stretched their Purses to redeem him c. T. B's 2d Lett. p. 18. Eucher But here currente Rotâ you have omitted something considerable and inconsiderately offered what is not so For I only state the Case when a King that was actually in the Throne goes off from it and resigns all to Anarchy which is justly interpretable to an Abdication of Government which was not Richard's Case which is therefore instanced altogether impertinently Yet in that * See Sir Richard Bakers Reign of Richard the First very Case whatsoever had been the procedures of the then Estates for the time being the subject people must have acquiesced in their judicial determinations and presumed them Legal till reversed in as Legal and Authentick Forms of Judgment tho' Richard had lain for ever unredeemed because the multitude are uncapable of judging our National Laws Rights and Capacities and cannot act regularly to the recovery of Right or performance of a National Duty Yet it is bold in you to say that my Vote would have passed against Richard's restitution since I that have well known the motions and sympathies of my own Soul thro' all this Revolution should certainly have been carried by my Bowels for that unfortunate King James against the wiser and major part of that Assembly you traduce But besides your insincerity in this parallel and your Censoriousness on me you seem to pervert or misunderstand my meaning when I said it is prodigious peevishness to require a Kings Presence or Commission when he is gone and hath left all in Anarchy For tho' it is then only proper to require a King or any person to restore his Presence when he is absent when during his Absence his presence is needed yet I never was so silly as to think Presence and Absence competible and connecessary at once or that a Commission in time of Absence was improper to supply the desect of personal Presence according to that ridiculous guise you clap upon my words but my apparent palpable intention was that it is prodigious peevishness to require a Kings Presence or Commission as necessary to make the Session of Estates Authentick when he affords neither Presence nor Commission for want of which all is left in supine and gasping Anarchy which were my express words on purpose set to obviate this and other like Cavils tho' honestly omitted by you for inconsiderable tho' therein lies the main force and form of my Argument which is like to stand unmoved notwithstanding all the impotent flurts of unmanly peevishness Dyscher At last you say the Estates of any Nation being * Sol. Ab. p. 4. invited by a victorious and unresisted Power may come together and treat with him that thus calls them tho' he hath no antecedent Authority strictly taken to call them Here is a pretty fetch in the word unresisted Power for irresistible you knew it was not and if it was unresisted whose fault was that May they refuse to resist an invading Power when they are able And may they make that disobedience the reason of their Compliance with him and casting off their own Sovereign But if without dawbing you had put the Case as it was it ought to run thus The Estates of any Nation or the natural
penal sanction but positive local and judicial does not oblige us but the natural reason substrate thereto supposes and indicates all obligations of Duty from all Relations whatsoever forfeited by Atheism and avowed Irreligion And accordingly Asa dishonoured his Mother in devesting her of her Royal Dignity because she had made an Idol in a Grove 1 King 15.13 2 Chron. 15.16 Nor is this any breach of the Law of Nature but the observation of it for the Law of Nature being nothing else but pure Abstract Reason and Equity whatsoever is consonant to this Equity comports with the Laws of our Nature By these Laws the sins of Men-rescind their Rights in many benefits which had been due to them in a state of Innocency The Law of God requires us simply to honour all men it being the natural due of our beings framed after the Image of God and yet wicked and ungodly men are to be shunned as spots and blemishes by the Law of Nature and to be made Anathema by the Censure of the Church For the Foundation of all Authority whatsoever is God and all Obligations to all Duties Civil Moral and Religious are founded in him so that an avowed rejection of God puts men out of all claims of Authority which alone is originally Gods for a renunciation of God is an effectual renunciation of all just and real Authority whatsoever The Fifth Commandment therefore being not a meer positive Precept but a dictate of Natural Equity is interpretable to particular Acts according to the Rules of Equity and must concede to superiour and more important Obligations which will sometimes require us to hate Father and Mother that is to disregard their Commands and forsake their Persons to keep Gods Commandments Luke 14.26 If a Son be a King and the Father a Subject he must deal with his own Father as a Subject in Civil Causes nay as a Malefactor if necessity requires A Son is bound to defend even by the Sword if there be no other way his Wife and Children from the Sword of his Father and to save his Country by the Detection of his Fathers Treasons And many such Cases more there may be wherein intolerable wickedness on one hand and greater Obligations on the other cut off the Ties of Honour and Union between Parents and Children Husbands and Wives and all other Temporal Relations since what separates men from God may well disengage them one from another And to put a particular Case if a Prince marry a Kings Daughter and Heiress and the King after becomes suspected of an Imposture to pervert that Daughters inheritance and upon demand will not refer that doubt to the Arbitration of his own Senate but to elude the Hopes and just Expectations of his Son in Law Daughter and his own People in this and other momentous Concernments he puts all the Laws Liberties and Religion of his Kingdoms in a Course of Subversion and ruin under Arbitrary and Foreign Powers may not such a Son in Law endeavour to put a stop to these Measures and to force such a King to do right And is such Prince's Wife bound to oppose her Husband in these just Causes to abet her Fathers injustice and unnatural Impiety And if the Father being thus pressed by the Son in Law rather than do the justice demanded will fly for the succour of his injustice to another unjust King the Enemy of his People and in the mean time leave his Kingdom in Confusion which shall subject it more effectually to his Scourge upon his return with Foreign Forces may not such Prince and such Kings Daughter and a confused Nation unite and settle it against the ruins otherwise inevitable to them all For if Natural Ties sometimes give place to Civils of greater weight here surely is as fair and just an instance for it as well can be imagined or alledged out of History And that Civil Obligations of greater moment do preponderate against Natural you your self confess when you rightly say had not the constitution been for the time being lawfully altered the Crown coming to the Princess of Orange by meer Descent the Prince here must have been her Subject tho' by the Matrimonial Laws of Nature he is her Lord. It is indeed a melancholy Speculation when the impieties of such near Relations break off all the Natural Links of Duty and Union which must never be receded from as long as the Union is tolerable and consistent with Superior Obligations but of two Evils the least is always to be chosen and where two Offices are incompetible the more important is to be prosecuted And yet tho' this be lawful and necessary 't is sometimes a Tragical Scene under which even the Righteous Parties are to mourn and lament their infelicity in falling into such Straits and Temptations and are incessantly to pray that God would put a just and good End to the Disaster and in the mean time to make necessary Justice and Piety the only Rule and Reason of their Actions in such a State of Division and inevitable Contention And such being the form of the present Affairs if you needs will censure the Morals of your Sovereigns you ought to allow their Measures all the Charity the Case will bear which hitherto seems the Care of Gods Especial Providence for us And if it be so it is a dangerous thing to Curse whom the Lord hath Blessed But I have told you these things concern not us in our Civils and it is therefore best to leave things secret and above us unto God the Lord and Judge of all men But as to the Change it self it is an apparent delivery and blessing to the Nation in the best manner attainable by any means less than supernatural For a deliverance it is plain we needed which could never have been secured had King James continued undisturbed in his Reign Now if an unrelated Prince had desired to help us yet he had had no Civil Interests to have grounded a defence or rescue us from any Civil Laws or Laws of War Then the Sovereignty given to a Stranger had been a cutting off the Line Royal which neither Atwood or Johnson have * Since Johnson will give Richard Rich a Right yet asserted lawful by our Rules It would also have been a punishing the sins of the Father upon the Children and inevitably have involved us in intestine Wars Then again if the Princess of Orange had invaded her Fathers Kingdom and Crown by any Hostile Forms this would have looked more violent and unnatural and seems more than the Princely Lady in Temper or Duty could well or easily have attempted Time was before a calm and thorow consideration of things that matters seemed hard but I am now convinced that no other Person under Heaven could in human prospect be so proper a Redeemer as his present Majesty nor any Form of Settlement devised to fore-fend the Ruin of this Nation upon whose Strength the Security of
Allegiance to the * Lib. 1. Can. 27. King de facto * Ibid. Chap. 28. tho' he come into the full Settlement by wrong and injurious means and requires only a National Submission or a continuance of quiet possession to the form of * Ibid. Chap. 30. a full and thorow Settlement owning the original wickedness of the seizure to be no Legal Bar or impeachment to the Authority of their Government into which they are formally and fully settled And such was the State of the Caesars in the Empire when the two great Apostles required Christian Subjection to them not on the moral justice of their Titles of which they could be no Judges but on their actual settlement in the Concession and Submission of the Senate and other popular Powers And such also was the reason of subjection in those instanced Changes on which that Convocation wisely grounded this their now celebrious Determination But since you have again upbraided me with Mr. Johnson I cannot choose but observe how naturally men that run into contrary extreams do meet in the other side of the Sphere as you and your greatest Adversaries do in this present Controversie And you both therefore fall into the same absurdities Now here Mr. Johnson either understands not the formal Nature of a full Settlement of if he does he is inconsistent with himself For if as I have proved a National Admission constitutes a Settlement how can Mr. Johnson explode Settlement when he places the Right of Kings in the Admission of the People But if he requires any moral justice to make the Act of the People Rightful then if the People fail in that moral Justice how can their Constitution be really Right by which Justice it self is violated And such failure in a People is no impossibility except you will entitle them to an infallible Sanctity in all popular Actions As for example Mr. Johnson produces but one Authority * Arg. 1. p. 50 51. out of Knyghton to prove that Kings acting perversly against the Laws may be deposed and some one of the Royal Race advanced by the Peers and People I will not now strive to weaken the Authority and Credit of the Author herein nor the Truth of that Power which the then Lords and Commons claimed against their King neither will I alledge the many Changes and Statutes since that seem to have abrogated the popular right of Abrogation but suppose that this still is the Right of the Nation against their Kings yet if the People should on false pretences and imputations abrogate their King this Act could not be morally Just and Right tho' it were in form legal and if the Subjects that are innocent are not to admit what is thus externally Legal except it be also altogether Rightful then are they not bound to stand by any Popular Abrogations which they know or judge to be morally faulty and consequently may oppose all new Titles if they are founded in the real Right of such Abrogations And to come close home to the Case if King James were not really guilty of every one of those Enormities to a Title upon which such Statute did legitimate the Abrogation and the Convention had really abrogated their King without accurate conviction of all those guilts recited by that lost or undiscoverable Statute quoted by Knyghton then had their Abrogation been a nullity as not being Rightful But further if men shall object that Knyghtons relation of a Statute not seen by himself but only said to be objected by the Peers and the Commons is not a Record nor a valid Testimony to any Civil Consequences as being not upon Oath liable to Error and uncapable of judicial forms of Discussion besides its singularity where shall we find a bottom to authorize King James's abrogation For 't is not enough to a Judicial Conviction or effect or surmise that Richard destroyed that Statute in the Tower upon such a general crimination that he defaced Statutes of which there is no particular form of Conviction extant no not in Knyghton who yet is the only Traditor of this Transaction but you must bring us legal proof for what must legally concern us And yet nothing else that Mr. Johnson hath cited out of Law Books nor King John's Charter in the Pastoral Letter doth amount to a Popular Right of Abrogation but only to a limited power of resisting Kings on their oppression of the Laws and Constitutions So that whatsoever has in fact been done toward our several Changes must not all be taken or sworn to as Right but the consequent Settlements by National Acts must be taken for formally Legal for the time being and submitted to under that Notion leaving the real Right of the procedures to Gods judgment because there is none other under Heaven to adjust it above the National Sanctions Dyscher I did not interject the mention of Mr. Johnson to justifie all his Principles but only to alledge for our Cause those Right Concessions of our greatest Enemies as more candid and clear from jugling than you even in his greatest bitterness I will now dismiss him and produce you what a Friend of mine impartially reflected on this pretended Authority in the Judicial Opinions of Parliaments viz. that you cannot but know that this Power of Parliaments is absolutely denied by that Party against whom you dispute and we do not think it reasonable to be convinced without proof viz. that what is thus done is agreeable to the Laws of England MS. Reflect Eucher If you are not inwardly convinced of the truth of their Judgment upon their Power and of the lawfulness of their Constitution founded thereupon I cannot help that Neither is the Care of the State so much concerned to enforce such an inward conviction tho' it is to perswade it and to silence Contradictions But as I have often told you Judicial Opinions must overbear all private ones to the contrary as to all Civil Consequences This the peace of mankind the necessity of ending Controversies and the fundamental Reasons of Government do universally require so that you must assign some Superior Court or Judge within the Kingdom to be determined by if you will not stand to their Judgment or expose all to private judgments the first of which is impossible to be sworn and the later impracticable in a Society And to turn the dull point of this Objection on your self the Parliament doth not think it reasonable to be determined by Private Judgments especially those of the professed Enemies of their long-settled and immemorial Authority And what if I oppose the general Trust of the Nation in Civils to the publick Judgment of our Parliaments rather than the contrary Decisions of some private Zealots and Casuists whose Senses are seldom uniform often impracticable and always inauthoritative Will you here set your Private Judgments in battle array against the Authority and Judgment of the whole Nation and the Publick Estates thereof Or whether
which they accept for their Majesties under that Interpretation contracts no Evil he thereupon takes in their Sense as judicially Legal and no other This I think is no Cozening of the State in the Swearer but a fair sincerity before God and the World and answerable at any Tribunal whatsoever Have you any thing more to say upon this Point Dyscher My Friend T. B. suggested no more matter of Arguments to me hereupon but only huffed and laid about him what that innocent Sense might be and the double boil'd Crambe of Swearing to Usurpers to maintain their Usurpations that while you make such a Pother about Senses your Conscience lies snarling within as he does without when he scorns your Pity and stiles you meek For-swearers meek Rebels meek Traitors meek Turks meek Jews meek Renegadoes and taxes your Merciless High-Priest for want of Bowels to a poor Boy whom it seems some of his Party had imployed in carrying Seditious Libels I will not tell you the manner of his Fury but it so startled me that I thought verily I must have sent for the Doctor Ser. J. B. Sec. Lett. pag. 27 28. Eucher But what say you to the danger of the Law even when King James returns if you treasonably break your Allegiance to King William Dyscher In this I find you are a Man tam Marti quam Mercurio otherwise called an Ambodexter For if you cannot perswade us you will affright us into the Oath or any thing else For you endeavour to possess us with an Opinion that King James if ever he returns will hang all them that do not Swear and pay Allegiance to William An hard Case that a Man can't be Wise and Honest without Hanging But why this extreme Severity Why Because the Lineal Heir may hang a Man as a Traytor for breach of Allegiance to an extralineal King Well but if King James should hang up all that did not pay Allegiance to William one would think he should not spare those who would not pay Allegiance to himself and this would make clear Work When Edward the Fourth first joined Battle against Henry the Sixth did not you think this would have made a powerful Speech for him to his Souldiers Gentlemen go on couragiously your Cause is good the Crown is evidently my Right and if I can recover it by your assistance I will certainly hang you up every Man for fighting against the extralineal King Henry Sixth who here appears in the Field against us and keeps me from it Sir I do not believe there is any Law to hang a Man for Loyalty and of all Men living I least fear it from King James T. B. Sec. Lett. pag. 30. And I appeal to your self whether you can believe that Interpretation you put upon our Laws * Sol. Ab. pag. 12. viz. That King James may Hang Men as Traitors for breaking their Allegiance to King William This is the same as if King Charles the Second should have Hanged Men as Traitors to the Common-Wealth of England who restored him to his Crown M. S. Reflex But in Truth all this Hanging stuff seems to have another Design not to tell what K. James may do but what you would have others to do as if they were excusable for any severity towards those who deny them that for which even King James himself may punish them It is a pious hint to your Government and your Mob T. B. Sec. Lett. pag. 30. Eucher I was willing to have saved you if it had been possible out of Error that so I might have kept you out of Danger But if there be no such Danger I am very glad of it What King James will do I am no Arbiter nor did I ever assume upon me to discover his Intentions I only minded you what by our Laws he may do if you are guilty of Treason against Allegiance required by our Laws to the present Sovereign But you according to the sincerity of a Zealot repeat me to have said that King James may hang you for not taking the present Oath that I may stir up the Powers and Mobb to do so presently But I thank God for your sake that tho' the Laws are severe upon unhappy Clergy-Men that cannot conform to the Oath yet such Recusancy does not by any Law make Men Traitors as not being made Treason If you live otherwise quietly and contrive no Seditions neither I nor the Laws can touch your Lives either now or hereafter in any Revolution But if you will incur Treason against extralineal Kings the Law since Henry the Seventh may be in force against you under the recover'd Reign of the Lineal however they stood in the Days of Henry the Sixth 'T is true Heirs Lineal that promote such Treasons may and no doubt always do stake Faith and Troth not only to indemnify but prefer their Adherents But in Edward the Fourth's Age and Army the Souldiers were not Lollards and Hereticks with whom the most Holy See and the more Holy Society will keep no Faith especially to succour and secure their Heresie He that hath seen what has been may easily see what will be if he will not shut his Eyes * See the state of the Protestants in Ireland under the late King James And in England among all other advances remember the Fanatick Commissions for enquiry into past tho' legal Prosecutions against Conventicles on purpose to enrage them to join their Skeems with the Papists to cut our Throats who had but just before saved the Kings own Throat from the same Hands But if the Old prudent Câ—ution 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 will produce no faith in you I leave you to your own Paradise Dreams and Dotages since the sagacious Observation of the Poets never quadrated so well to any person or purpose as me and mine upon this occasion invitum qui servat idem facit occidenti And yet for all my good will the sport you make with me in your Edward the Fourths Martial Oration exposes your Principles perhaps more than my Law For by the straiâ—s you have made upon the Duties of Christian subjection which Custom has named Passive Obedience Edward the Fourth's Souldiers had been bound to have fought for him tho' he had made them such an Oration which could not have been imprudent upon your Principles of Christian Loyalty But if such an Oration would have justified the consequent Revolt or recession of his Army then is this Nation and all the Protestants of King James's Army justified in their leaving him and going over to the Prince since his assumed Dispensing Power and superlative Prerogatives the Obedience contracted to the Sec of Rome and the Society of Jesus and all his hasty steps he made to the dissolution of our Laws Liberties and Religion were a Proclamation as fatal to this Kingdom and his Protestant Souldiers as the Speech you have framed for King Edward And they took the Language and intention of his Actions accordingly
as if he had said My Protestant Nobles Clergy Magistrates Officers and Souldiers do you actually fight for me execute all my Commands be passive under all my Contrivances against your Religion Laws and Liberties and when I have gained my ends I 'll make you all sworn Slaves and Papists or else Iâ—le melt your Grease for you But to return from this pertinent Sally as to the Law that I set it rightly as it stands at this Day from a long Descent is notorious to the World from the Judicial and received Determinations in Parliament and the King's Courts so often pleaded and alledged by the Advocates for our present Allegiance to whom and to whose Originals I therefore refer you Only I think fit here to relate the yet unpublished sense of a most judicious and excellent Person sent me before any Prints appeared on this Subject His words are these What I principally insist on is That our Law requires Subjection and Obedience to the Powers in being To prove this I shall here set down the words of Sir Edward Coke and in the Margin note the Authorities to which he refers Sir Edward Coke speaking of the Statute of the 25th of Edward the Third concerning Treason saith that this Statute is to be understood of a King in Possession of the Crown and Kingdom Vid. 11. Hen. 7. c. 1. For if there be a King Regnant in possession altho' he be Rex de Facto non de Jure yet is he Seignior le Roy 4 Edw. 4.1 Instit part 3. fol. 7. within the Purview of this Statute And the other that hath Right and is out of Possession is not within this Act. Nay if Treason be committed against a King de Facto non de Jure and after the King de Jure cometh to the Crown he shall punish the Treason done to the King de Facto and a Pardon granted by a King de Jure that is not also de Facto mark this for it concerns the Nation against wheedling Declarations is void So to the same effect Judge Hales his Pleas of the Crown pag. 11. This Argument saith my invaluable Friend I take to be of great force because the measures of Subjection are not the same in all Countreys but must be taken from the Laws and Customs of every Countrey Thus he And if you will impartially reflect upon your own Words in which you blame me for inferring that King James when he returns may punish Men for breaking Allegiance to King William these words concede it For if you admit unto me a breach of Allegiance in facts committed against King William you then presuppose an Obligation for Allegiance to him so broken and to break a Duty is punishable by the penal Sanction or virtue of that Law that makes it a Duty and therefore if not punished nor pardoned before the return of the King de Jure he may punish it as a Crime against his Laws And your taking the instance of the Oliverian Common-wealth to this your concession impudently admits Allegiance due thereunto and makes the Opposers thereof Traitors and Legally punishable by King Charles the Second for High Treason But in Truth no Laws had engaged Allegiance to O. C. or his Common-wealth as they have to Kings de facto And moreover if the Estates themselves in free and at that time and case extraordinary legal Parliament upon the antecedent Expiration and in utter Renunciation of that Common-wealth and all other Forms of Democracy recalled him it had been Treason to have opposed and Loyalty to have concurred in that their Restitution But I stated the Case of O. C. so clearly in our last Conference that I fancy it beyond the power of T. B. himself as spiteful as he is to parallel the Tenure of O. C. with that of King William whatsoever he may without Argument rant and rave to the contrary As for the Reproach of stirring up the Powers or the Mob against you I reply that you prevent me in that Intrigue your selves and I will give you any Form of Security either Sacred or Secular upon Soul or Body or Goods that I will never provoke them against you as much as your selves have done and still for ought I see persevere to do Dyscher We are very luckily fallen in again upon the mention of O. C.'s Authority and Settlement over us I pray let us review that Article For tho' T. B. for want of Argument cries out stark shame upon you and is once oh wonder ashamed for you in such a sort of Civility as he never vouchsafes himself how much soever he needs it because you will not be confuted by his Brass and Impudence and our Learned Pens I will see what Grace may be wrought in you by some Impartial Reflections of a softer Metal but of great weight You make a pretty sort of disparity between the Tenure and Settlement of King William and O. C. * Sol. Ab. g. 12 13. Because O. C. was not King as if the Charm lay in a word Call him Hospador if you will for me Is not the Duke of Muscovie King of that Countrey because he is called Duke It is the Authority and Power we are speaking of not by what Names it is called M. S. Reflex Eucher I took my self for a Conjurer nor will I endeavour to enchant you with words instead of things since your Temper will not hearken to the voice of the Charmer charm he never so wisely And therefore without troubling the Peace of that great Duke you may please to remember that there is an old received and approved distinction between the Titles and Characters of King and Tyrant The former is he that Reigns according to the Laws and Forms of Civil Constitutions and his Character and Authority is Grateful and Honourable The latter Rules by meer force oppression and bondage without any Civil Form of Tenure or Settlement by a power only potential not potestative and therefore without a proper Authority And this Character is in most especial manner given to Usurping Rebels as well as to Foreign Invaders to destroy which Tyrants the Universal Sense of Nations ever judged it lawful because they have no Form of Title but that of the Sword Violence and forcible Entry Now King William holds this Sovereignty by the former legal way of National Contract and Civil Establishment but O. C. had no other Mode of Profession but Tyrannical and so had no legal which is the only Form of Authority And yet beside perhaps the very Style of King is necessary to the real Sovereigns of England in order to their Claims of Allegiance by virtue of the old Oath and Laws tho' when new Laws and Constitutions extinguish the old a new Allegiance may be due to a new Sovereign under any other Titular Style But if this Style be thus necessary to oblige our Allegiance by the old Laws then for want of that very Character no Allegiance was due
interrupt you did you not deny * Sol. Ab. pag. 23. Zadok's Title to be derived from the Kings donation tho' the Scripture expressly affirms that K. Solomon did put Zadok the Priest in the room of Abiathar I Kings 2.35 And do you now on a sudden put all the power of disposing that Priesthood in the arbitrary will of their Sovereigns that so you may oppose the Drs. Principles Dyscher What I delivered then can well consist with my present Sentiments which I offer not in an itch of contradicting the Doctor but upon the reasonableness of the thing it self For in Solomon's time the Genealogies were extant and the due course of Succession obvious on which account I take it Zadok had before in David's time been admitted under Abiathar into the communicable Offices of the Pontificate in order perhaps to the next plenary Succession after the death of Abiathar which Succession now commenced on Abiathar's remove before the time preintended by the actual introduction of him by King Solomon into the possession of what he had an antecedent Title to upon the next vacancy either by the right of Primogeniture which the antient Jews have owned from the first Patriarchs and the Law Lev. 16.32 or upon an ordination by the Ecclesiastic Powers of the Sanhedrin as men of Talmudic learning have conjectured Now it is certain that their native Kings of God's own appointment were obliged to keep the Law and every man's Rights established by it and the doing otherwise was really sinful and offensive tho' such unjust acts of Kings had among them the effectum juris as appears in the sentence of David between Ziba and Mephibosheth If therefore Solomon had rejected Zadok as well as Abiathar such causeless procedure in my opinion had been unjust but yet valid as being not subject to any Tribunal and presumable for just and done upon reasonable although secret Causes But when the Sovereignty fell into the hands of gentile Princes not tyed to the Mosaic Constitutions as their native Kings were and the Genealogies were lost and the Legal Successors unknown or absent the necessity of some high-Priest made the person upon each such vacancy Elective by the Supreme power or with the permission thereof by the priests and people as appears in the Maccabâ—ic History and Josephus Amongst which instances there is one above all most considerable viz. that of Simon who was made high-Priest by the Jews and Priest for ever until there should arise a faithful Prophet 1 Maccab. 14.41 to discover the lineal Successor as also to shew them what to do 〈◊〉 the defiled Stones of the Sanctuary 1 Maccab. 4.46 Whence it appears the sense of that people from the constitution of that Priesthood in Simon and his heirs for want of the true Proprietary Family First that there was an absolute necesity of the high-priesthood Secondly that it legally belonged to Aarons lineal heirs Thirdly that in want of them they if they had freedom were to elect another Family for that Succession All which set together discovers Zadok to be the next regular Successor to Abiathar since the Scriptures impeach not the King of any irregular and despotic injuries against the Laws of the high Priesthood Eucher But what say you to that note of the Dr that it was of the greatest consequence to the Jews to have the annual Expiation performed by one apointed to it by God Does not this argue the Deposition of such a one null and yet upon necessity God permitted the Jews to own the Successor coming in by mere intrusion Dyscher To this I answer that if God himself allowed the Jews to admit such intruders then it appears that it was not of the greatest consequence to the Jews to have the Expiation performed by one to whom it belonged by the constitution of the Law For if the Intruders Expiations were effectually acceptable they did the business as well as the Liturgy of the legal Proprietor But further Gods admission of the Intruder after Intrusion takes off his irregularity ratifies his Title and vacates that of the ejected and so is of Gods particular occasional appointment for the time being tho' not by the original designation of the Law and so this is nothing to the Drs. Hypothesis or Cause And this is in fact the real state of that Case in such Changes The State Civil first intruded Successors into the room of the expelled but this not creating any Plenitude or Sanctity of Title God made up this defect by giving the Intruders the Spirit of Prophecy which supervening made them also Gods high-priests to all Sacred as well as Civil purposes Which act of Gods was not a mere acknowledgment of their antecedent Authority but an efficient thereof to all the intents of the Levitic Law tho' the Dr. would fain perswade us to a contrary notion herein Yet had it been a mere consequent acknowledgment of their Priest hood held only by Intrusion as * Case of Sees c. Ch. 3. § 3. the Dr. intimates it had been nothing to his purpose because upon the Extinction of the Genealogies and Ignorance of the lineal Heirs and the more plenary Subjection therefore of that pontificate to the Gentile Sovereigns who were despotic and free from all the ordinary Rules that obliged their native Kings this had made these Changes of High-Priests in the potificate being an office carnal and temporal even in its Religious acts formally valid and authoritative for that these Gentile powers came into the Sovereignty of their native Kings or perhaps a greater to whom God at their request had subjected the Hierarchy after the manner of the Nations And a great deal of this I told you * Sol. Ab. pag. 24. in our last Conference which no doubt you consulted your Dr. upon tho' he takes no notice of it And I then drop'd another note perhaps worth a second Rumen with you that those Intrusions tho' thus admitted by God were signs of a broken Church and State hastening to its last Dissolution and so no just Precedent for the Christian Church to follow which is to continue to the End of all things except we must yield to methods of Violation that lead to our Extinction And I leave it to the pious consideration of every Religious Conscience to judge whether those servile Submissions to Imperial violences in the instances of the Baroccian Treatise and the others produced by the Learned Dr. against his Opponents did not properly lead to the ruin of the Church into which the Greeks from these precedents are fallen under Mahometan powers all which had been effectually obviated had the Church stuck to the Laws and Canons of the Christian Hierarchy and Communion against the encroachments of wicked Emperors against which it is the Duty of all Churches obstare principiis in contempt of persecutions Hereby and hereby alone shall we be able to stifle all Erastian and Antichristian Arts with which their concomitant persecutions
Union Eucher As to that Principle of the Identity of Church and State and the Consequences Men draw from thence to assert the Right of Civil Authority in Spiritual Processes I leave it to them whose Heads are clear enough to justifie it But for my own part allowing your exceptions to the contrary yet our Case has justified it self ex naturâ Rei And I must further advertise you that this Church has long submitted to the use of such Powers over us and that fundamentally in Q. Elizabeth's Reformation and in many other matters in which the State had not so much pretence of Right or Necessity all which have passed uncensured by us but in this whether well or ill God must judge The Subscription of a Popish Clergy to avoid a Premunire drew after it such Acts of Parliament as thro' which we can make no provision for the Church noâ— move a question for her good without Royal License nor have so much freedom in our Concernments and Duties as every little Corporated Burrough has in it's voluntary Councils which tho' it be a tolerable Condition under a good King that has a Zeal for Christianity yet under an Irreligious King 't is an absolute Bondage and bar to the Primitive Purity Course and Vigour of Religion In the Reign of Edward the VI. they struck out the Ordinaries names out of all Processes Ecclesiastical and set in the Kings as if all Church Power had been derived from the Crown the non-payment of Tenths tho' omitted by mere neglect and not on any Principle of Opinion remains yet a Cause of Deprivation And those shackles which the State of old thought necessary to restrain us from Popery now the reasons of that Conduct are cessant become great Obstacles to the Primitive and Catholic Reformation of our yet remaining defects of which thâ—s Church upon a just liberty and Authority restored her would become the first Example and the noblest Standard Yet all this Subjection we have born in Silence tho' hereby only can Popery be reduced whensoever a Popish Conjuncture shall arise upon us and no Body has yet dared to offer a good mediation with the Public for a Temperament in these things And if our dulness herein has not been by us or you accounted Schismatical shall we be judged Schismatics in admitting these much more reasonable Deprivations in which the Lay-powers are concerned not only in point of Care and Interest but even in certain and undubitable measures of Right Dyscher How so Sir Eucher As the State is the Churches Hospital so a Corporal or Civil Communion is substrate to the visible Communion of the Church For tho' I allow you what you * Sol. ab pag. 25. justly challenge to the innocent a primitive fundamental and undeniable Right to good as well in common as in consecrated Places yet it is certain that in order to this Claim they must give all just security and assurance of their innocency upon Test demanded by the Civil Powers that are Guardians of these fundamental Liberties to all good Subjects of which innocency an Oath of Allegiance seems the most obvious proper and usual Form of security between Subjects and Sovereigns Otherwise the Civil Powers may restrain those Libeties of which they are the Trustees Thus a Civil Soveraign may prohibit and punish all conversation with the Enemies or Recusants of his Civil Authority Now conversation simply in it self alone is a secular communication but absolutely Fundamental to the Ecclesiastical which is a visible Communion in Spirituals Though then the Secular Authority alone as such does not touch the Spirituals yet it may upon just and legal Causes take away all that secular and local Communion that is substrate to the Ecclesiastical And he that may upon Recusancies of Subjection forbid all personal Communication with a Recusant may forbid it in any certain Place Time Matter or Measure and consequently at all such Times and Places when and where the Recusant may call upon him to attend in Spirituals But this Right and Authority of the Magistrate I lodge not in arbitrary will respectively but on the nature and merit of the provocation And the Right which the Christians have to the Liberty of their Sacred Functions is not peculiar to them as Christians by a Charter altogether unconditionally exempt from Civil Powers and so a Right of Gods positive constitution in the Church as a Society founded by Christ liable to no secular Reflections for any Cause whatsoever but is a common and natural Right to all Persons of clear and unspotted innocency as such to do that which is good originally due to them from the Creation And hence Civil Powers becoming Judges of our Morals and Innocency are Guardians of that natural Right but may justly deny it to others but will not approve their innocency by due Tests to the Public Peace of the Government to which Recusants therefore the rightful Capacity Ecclesiastical Communion is lost when the natural Right to Society is either totally or in the proper opportunities of sacred Communion justly denied by the Civil Powers And to say true he that by ill Principles or Practices deserves the loss and deprivation of all common Society much more deserves the deprivation of the Spiritual that stands as a Super-structure on the other And therefore if our ill merits Authorize the Powers to take away at the bottom the Foundation of our Religious Commuion they can tho' not directly and immediatly touch yet undermine the spiritual Structure by destroying its secular Foundation which lies within the Authority and Care of Civil Powers So that in this respect and form an Heathen Prince may rightly deprive seditious or disloyal Priests of the Priviledge of actually using their Ecclesiastical Functions by rightly denying them so much secular Society as is Fundamentally requisite to the exercise of them And thus far a Statute of Deprivation may have this Civil obligation that no Subject shall yield corporal Communion with Recusant Priests when they call him to sacred Offices any where and Laws may shut them out from consecrated Places that there may be no such local Society in them And if such Recusancy against civil Powers be notorious confessed or avowed then is such Act of State both just and civil only but at the same time the bottom of the Recusants Ecclesiastical Offices is righteously and validly taken away Dyscher Well well notwithstanding these Subtilties yet the Temporal Powers cannot take away the actual Relation between Priest and People tho' they may suspend or incapacitate them hereby from the actual Ministeries of their Orders And so hence accrues no Right to civil Powers to impose new Bishops on the Church Eucher There are two known Canonical Causes of depriving Spiritual Persons Immoralities and erroneous Principles So that if either of these hath merited and drawn after it a Forfeiture and Deprivation of all that secular and local Communion and Society which is necessary to the
uncertain Rochester Letter make the Abdication manifestly false since he says it makes the Disertion so Here I doubt his Courage will fail him lest his Argument and his Dedication follow the fate of the Pastoral Letter And yet it is manifest that though K. James made many large and previous steps to the Subverting our Constitution yet the Final Abdication of the whole Government consisted in his Desertion from whence the Vacancy Commenced and if this were no otherwise manifest we have Mr. Johnson's own Averment who tells us * ibid page 29. That we have an Act of Parliament which declares the Realm of England to have been Sovereign during that time of Vacancy between K. James's second flight and K. William's Admission by ordering all Indictments from the time of K. James ' s withdrawing till the 13th of February to run in their Name 'T is true indeed that meer Local Desertion of the Land of which there may be many Causes does not ipso facto extinguish the Sovereignty except it be judicially interpretable to an Abdication from other concurrent Circumstances and Indications on want of which a demand of Return becomes reasonable and the neglect thereof interprets the Recession to an Abdication but when there are evident tokens of yielding up a Government in the form manner causes and circumstances of such Local Desertion then a summons of Return is not necessary in point of Law or National Duty upon the antecedent forms of Virtual Abdication apparent in such Departure If therefore his Act of Disertion in its own form made a Legal and Effectual Abdication his Rochester Letter imports no more than that his words and actions are contradictory in quitting by deed and claiming by word the same Right at the same time Upon this Abdication therefore the Throne becoming actually Vacant was by the Act of the Nation filled up with their Majesties And here upon whatsoever powers K. James endeavours to Exert as they do not reach us nor send out their vertue by legal ways of course so are they too late and out of season not to mention that his late ways of Exertion under French Conduct how honest soever you may call them look not very natural or smiling upon English Men If we sum up the matter he was ruining all the Laws and Liberties with the Religion of the Lands he Ruled and they were just on the Precipice under his Exertions so that the Nation needed and gasped for relief under them Upon this the Prince of Orange having Great Interests and Legal Expectations here comes over with a declared Intention to set all things at Right in such order as the English Parliament should adjust which was a fair and most equal design this then was the time for K. James to have Exerted his Royal Power Justice too in calling a Parliament for such purposes according to the sense of the whole Nation earnestly recommended to him by his Prelates Nobles and Counsellors for a long time by sundry Addresses even to the last and he having sent out some writs thereunto seemed a while enclined but upon Romish Advice recalls that purpose and instead of doing us that Justice was resolved to contest it with the Sword Hereupon his Army which had he called a Parliament to have healed the Nation would have secured him against all Forreign and Domestick Violence sunk their Affections as having no maw to Fight for him against their Native Country Liberties and Religion disperse by degrees and great part go over to that which they knew to be the Juster Cause and he being thus daily weakned retires disbands the rest and even not then calling a Parliament to help himself and us out of the Confusion he flies away to the Grand Enemy and Terrour of this Nation and leaves us to shift for our selves under those Aspects and apprehensions of dangers that lay before us If then he would not exert a Legal Power when he might 't is too late to offer at any Forreign ways of Exertion after a New Settlement or 't is at least unreasonable to demand our Reception of them to the destroying of our Redeemer after a National Allegiance given him for his sake who ever pursued our general Ruine against the Laws his Oath the ties of Natural Affection and the Sighs Groans and Requests of his Loyal People And whereas you say we may have his Power and Presence too if we will as lovely as that may be fancied 't is more than you can warrant For if we were disposed to accept your offers if he should come with a French force are you secured that the French would permit him to be as free and independent a Monarch as before 'T is possible they might erect him for a Vassal titularly Royal till their strength were fixed and then upon demand of Expences or other pretexts pick a quarrel with him to annihilate him for their Masters Glory Or supposing the French King for once a true Friend to King James would not his Forces make King James an Arbitrary Monarch here to exert more than a legal Power over all the Bodies and Souls Estates Coffers and Purses of the Nation If we had had any maw for such Power we might easily have had it while he was here and not have been beholden to the French for the Commodity But if King James should concert privately with us to return without any French measures or services can you assure us to keep this secret from the French King Or if you fail in point of secrecy are you sure he will let King James go or treat with us in neglect of his Interests and Pleasure Or would he not rather Bastile him for Ingratitude and treat him hereupon after his usual methods of humanity Thus pretty are your Projects to expose the Fate and Fortunes of Nations upon and discover such a distemper in the Brain as requires the Law of Bedlam rather than any other consideration Dyscher When we deny the Authority by which your Estates sate you ask us by what Authority was that Free Parliament called or sate that voted in King Charles the Second Sir if you please let another be called and vote in King James the Second When things are out of Order and good men set them to Rights again I do not think any man will oppose it upon the score of some small niceties but when subjects rebel against their Prince and drive him away and make that the ground of their going on and doing farther wickedness I cannot understand the Authority of this There is certainly in every man an innate natural Power and Authority to wish well to and vote for Right By virtue of this when things were in confusion the Subjects of King Charles the Second returning to their Wits and Allegiance send a convenient number to act for the whole who recall their rightful King and if you should do so likewise I should not be very quarrelsom with you But whatever
follow every Civil Judgment much less the Vncivil Judgment of any Sett of Conspirators and Traitors into whose hand you so liberally and piously dispose it T. B's 2d Lett. p. 19. Eucher I am resolved that no calumnious usage shall storm or transport me into any indecent or uncharitable passion But tho' for my own part I might reject your imputations of disloyalty with scorn and silence yet for your conviction I will calmly remind you that I ever told you that the Estates of this Land are not Judges of the Kings Person who is not under their Power nor in Law subject to them And all that I any where said of their Judgment about the Throne amounts to no more than this that in a state of Anarchy on a King's Desertion or in Arbitration between two or more Competitors the Estates of this Land are the Supream Domestick Judges and Arbiters upon the Tenure of the Sovereignty and the Rights of the Nation in order to Settlement And that in case an irresistible or unresisted Potentate * Sol. Ab. p. 5. enforce himself upon the Nation for a new King and the Subject people cannot help it our Laws in this concur with the Laws and Practice of all Nations in allowing our Estates to determine for us in such Exigencies * Ibid. p. 4. that in extra-ordinary interruptions and convulsions of State our Laws and Constitutions allow the Estates such a King as can actually be had for the time being for which * Ibid. p. 5. I refer to our Histories Acts of Parliament and Judgments of Law under hereditary Kings since the Reformation without any Remonstrance of King Church or State to the contrary and at last to Bishop Overals Convocation Book So that if a Question arise in the disordered Kingdom who is my King to whom my Allegiance is legally payable I refer to their Judgment as the then Supream in all our Civils and if you can assign any Superior or more Legal Judgment to decide and determine such national Questions and Controversies I am content to give up fairly to you And if you can produce any Homilies Articles Canons or Monuments of this Church contrary to these my Positions then I will yield that the Churches Authority as far as that can go upon Civil Questions will lie against me But a mans Eyes shall sooner drop out of his Head than discover any such counter-principles in the publick constitutions of our Church which you would have quoted if you could particularly but since that could not be done 't was very feeble to make such an hollow and causeless noise about it And yet if the Church in Civils had interpreted the Laws contrary to the Judgments of the State she had given a null and incompetent Judgment since we are no Authentick Doctors in these matters nor the Church a Court of Civil Judicature prohibitions always justly lying on her whensoever she admits the Pleas and assumes the Judgment of Civil Causes As to the Rebellion against King Charles the First it comes not near our Case for there was a King actually Regnant who in Parliament had redressed all their Grievances and whose Tenure was indisputable and undisputed the very Rebels owning their Arms to be for King and Parliament But neither was that Rebellion a judicial form of proceeding of both Houses of which only I spake as Authentick in the Actual Vacancy of the Throne and a state of Anarchy but a military one by a divided part of the Houses assuming the Style and Title of the whole Parliament against a King actually Regnant which I had no occasion to mention much less to justifie the Nation having since condemned it by Act of Parliament Nor had it been entred into by the unanimous Vote of both Houses had it obliged as a Law as wanting the Royal Assent of the King then Regnant And the Rights of the Crown and Duties of our Allegiance are still the same tho' Milton will still have Successors to his Villanies arise when their Sovereigns are involved to tamper with popular and seditious humours and ambitions in order to new projected commotions But they who make the Convention to have proceeded on principles of Rebellion contrary to their enacted Judgments that hence they may draw Arguments to whiten the Old and to enflame New Rebellions deserve they and their incendiary Pamphlets to be burnt together Nor need you fear any such consequence from any my Positions as if upon these the Parliaments may change their Kings every Day and thereupon our Oaths For I have asserted no Convention of Estates to be in Name or Thing a Parliament if they mect contrary to the Fundamental Laws of their Constitution And while a King is actually Regnant they * The Triennial Act was not pasied when this was written yet meet sit are prorogued and dissolved at the Kings Order only And this being yet the form of our State no Votes or Bills of the Houses can pass into an Act or Law without the Assent of the King Regnant at whose pleasure they immediately are and are not and so can make no Legal Assembly or publick Change without or against him over whose Person they are neither Lords nor Judges For tho' Causes of the King may come before the Lords and be overruled in Justice to the Subjects Right against which they are brought thither yet this is no more than what we see in other Courts which yet pretend no Sovereignty over the Kings Person by whose Commission they sit in Judgment So far am I from such wicked Principles as Plat-thorns in the Crowns of Kings and set them in the most unsupportable Bondage that Art or Ill-nature can contrive but withal provoke great spirited and designing Princes to seek avenues to an Arbitrary Power who would have gladly been contented with a regular and equal Sovereignty if they could have been secured in it from the fears and incentives of popular insolence But to return from this Digression if a King thro' any fear or cause whatsoever utterly deserts his Kingdoms and leaves all in Anarchy and Confusion that the Estates of the Land if they can should then Convene and settle the Nation the best way they can is so far from Rebellion that it is most certainly both their Priviledge and their Duty And if they are first to determin our Settlement I am sure the Churches Loyalty is to follow their Judgment except we challenge an Appeal from them to the Church to ratifie or vacate our Civil Constitutions And if you call this Duty of Submission to their Civil Settlements implicit Faith in the Parliament it will be prone to retort that you challenge an implicit Faith in the Church and that in matters not Ecclesiastical in a latitude more Exorbitant than any Pretensions of the Church of Rome But the Truth is our Duty to any such established Settlements is not founded in an implicit Faith whose proper Objects are things not seen
have said for while there is one in being and claiming to whom the Right really belongs what can your extra-ordinary Successors be but Tyrants and Vsurpers T. B's 2d Lett. p. 20 21. Eucher This I confess is an amazing Circumvention if my Memory hath in truth beguiled me And 't is a challenge enough to shock a greater confidence than mine To prove this therefore we must recur to the Form Enacted by the Statute Anno Tertio Jacobi Regis c. Also I do swear from my heart that notwithstanding any Sentence of Excommunication or Deprivation made or granted or to be made or granted by the Pope or his Successors or by any Authority derived or pretended to be derived from him or his See against the said King his Heirs or Successors or any absolution of the said Subjects from their obedience I will bear Faith and true Allegiance to his Majesty his Heirs and Successors and him and them will defend to the utmost of my Power against all attempts whatsoever that shall be made against his or their Persons their Crown and Dignity by Reason and Colour of any such Sentence or Declaration or otherwise and will do my best endeavour to disclose and make known unto his Majesty his Heirs and Successors all Treasons and Traiterous Conspiracies which I shall know or hear of to be against him or any of them These are all the times the words Heirs and Successors are mentioned in the Oath and in these here is no Character of Lawful set at all So that here you fall under the same fault you charge upon me of not reading the Oath and another added in a bold interpolation thereof at all adventure or if you have read it 't is the greatest of all prevarications consciously to misrender it but whether it were the one or the other it is the most frontless and unparallel'd impudence to down-face an obvious Truth with notorious Falshood And yet have a little patience to see what you had gained by this remark if it had been true You had said * Sol. Ab. p. 3. That the Oath of Allegiance binds to the King his Heirs and Lawful Successors and I taking it for granted that you interjected the word lawful not as a part but an interpretation of the Oath denied it not but without any cavil candidly admitted it but because I formed an Inference from that Oath that you like not you interpolate the Text of the Oath by foisting in the word lawful that hence you might draw a pretence that Lawful Successors limitedly denote the Lineal Heirs But neither would this have held For had the word lawful been found in the Oath my Argument had still been good * Sol. Ab. p. 5. That in the late Oath of Allegiance after the words Heirs the words Lawful Successors were added on this very self same ground that tho' Heirs by the ordinary Course are the Legal Successors yet others legally may succeed in Cases extraordinary Nay this legality of such extra-lineals had been more fully acknowledged had the word Lawful been inserted than now it is For now if a man would be perverse and were there no other Reason upon other Bottoms he might argue that this Oath simply setting all Successors without any express Qualification of Lawful to exclude unlawful requires Allegiance to all Actual Successors indiscriminately without any reserved respect to any legality or illegality But whether we suppose the Quality of Lawful as intended by the Sense or no the addition of Successors after Heirs denotes that their may be Successors to whom our Allegiance is by Oath secured that are not Heirs in the strict sense of Lineal Descent or else after Heirs no word of that Importance ought to have been added But as I was at first candid in the Concession of the Legality so will I here give you the reason of that Candor Having then observed that all Duties respect Laws and that what is not Legal can have no Legal Obligation and withal that the Oath obliges to the Successors of the very same Legal Sovereignty established here it appeared to me that he that comes into any other form of Sovereignty over us hath no right to our Allegiance by virtue of that Oath or the old standing Laws whatsoever Title thereto he may acquire by virtue of New Laws and Constitutions But if he assumes a Sovereignty that is in no wise Legal 't is Tyranny in Form and Nature and while it is barely such the man is an Enemy and no Allegiance can be due to him Now the Legal Forms by which Extra lineal Kings are invested with the English Sovereignty stand in Admission and Recognition of our Estates when insuparable Exigencies or just Causes incapacitate the Heirs Lineal to reign over us or us to be reigned over by them of which Obstacles in a state of Anarchy the Estates are our Supreamest and Final Judges Dyscher But what have you to say to an Impartial Reflection which I shall here offer you from another hand viz. that you maintain * See Sol. Ab. p. 6. That by our Oath to King James we are bound to pay Allegiance to King William which seems so strange a Paradox that the defending of it must serve only to let the World see that there are no Words nor Oaths possible to be framed for which men may not find Distinctions and Salvo's to turn them which way they think fit even directly opposite to what they were at first intended MS. Reflect Eucher Truly Brother this looks rather like whining under an Argument than an Answer to it for men seldom make a moan under any Objection they can solve Yet is your Reflecters Complaint herein as little sincere as manly For I said not that our Oath to King James alone obliges our Allegiance to King William as you from him represent me but that * Sol. Ab. p. 4. to p. 6. putting all together that I had said my concluding Opinion was that our Old oath of Allegiance supposing it still in force to the King his Heirs and Successors binds us to pay Allegiance to King William and Queen Mary as the present actual recognized Successors to King James upon extinction though not of his Life yet of his Sovereignty And this you can never disprove except you either shew that in that Oath the word Successors so distinctly set after Heirs three times in the same Paragraph was purposely set to exclude all Extra-lineal Kings for the time being whereby all the Statutes and former ties of Allegiance actually owned under the past Extra-lineals will be repealed by this Enacted Oath and all Judgments ever since past accordingly vacated or else that King William and Queen Mary are not actual Successors to King James in this Sovereignty by the same or as legal forms of Constitutions as other Extra-lineals were before them by a National Admission and Recognition tho' somewhat more than Extralineal Forms may be challenged to
Deliverance having forgotten that Compassion which I deeply have for all Royal Tragedies would be apt to make a jest of this and reply upon you that they have been served well enough in the first place before the Prince and Princess of Orange who are well enough served too and all as they deserve But I shall only observe your inconsiderateness of discourse in bringing in King James into the Catalogue of his own Heirs after his Cession upon which I said the Succession was not violently broken but altered by the consent of the next Heirs And this I think I may still defend without breach of modesty even tho' I should allow the proceedings of the Convention to have been violations of his Right For a violent Expulsion of a Possessor may consist with the true Succession of the next Reversioners But admitting the Cession or Abdication for real what need was there to solicit his further consent to our Establishments And for your Prince of Wales beside the doubt of the Nation concerning his Descent the late Queen brought him into a Cession before the Cession and Abdication of the King nor were there any Claims entred for him before the Convention and so he might be legally neglected for want of Claimer I know this has been charged on the Prince and the Convention for not admitting the Discussion of that Descent But I think no Law could oblige them to move it ex officio when he was absent and no Promoter appeared on his behalf But further to enquire into the Equity hereof if King James at the Prince's demand had called a Parliament that had been one of the Principal Articles to have been judicially determined by the Parliament between them But King James not calling a Parliament nor allowing the Convention power of Judgment herein there was no reason such a Question should be admitted there which if determined against King James and his Prince of Wales should not have concluded them but if given against the Princess of Orange should have confined and excluded her As to your politick stroke upon the Princess of Denmark I shall reflect no more than this that if she will permit you to the Conduct of her Counsels she is like to thrive mightily by it For you will advise her either to present flight or sedition only to make way for I know not what or how many new Princes of another Venter whose real Descent no one should ever know but the Men of the Mysteries Perhaps your Agents have laid the Seeds of Discontent between the two Princely Ladies already in order to form your other Projects but I hope that God that has hitherto preserved them in their natural Rights against all the Arts of those who would have illegitimated or intercepted their Sucession will still preserve her Royal Highness from the Snares you lay for her And since you have blurted out the Secret to the Publick she and the whole Kingdom have reason to take close notice of it Dyscher When we object the immoralities of these proceedings you tell us * Sol. Ab. p. 6. That the internal immorality of all Actions must be carefully distinguished from the Civil Consequences of them A Son say you by fraudulent Arts gets judgment in Law and seizes his Fathers Estate and Body by Execution and starves his Father in Prison this mans immorality is damnable Yet the Judges Sheriffs and other Officers are innocent It may be so while they act as Officers of Law and according to the directions of Law But if your Judges Sheriffs or other Officers join with and assist such a wicked Son or Daughter to effect such an Evil Act or do applaud and approve it when they know it be done by such wicked and unlawful Acts then their being Officers of Law will rather increase than diminish their Guilt T. B's 2d Lett. p. 23. Eucher Now all this I allow too whether done judicially or in forms of Law or no. But if it be done in private and not in Legal Forms it is nothing to our purpose or my objection But if the Judges sit in Judgment between the Father and the Son and very wickedly cast the Father in his Cause yet it being done in form of Law the Judgment will pass into such Execution as will be taken for formally legal tho' the Judgment be morally unjust and contract an heinous Guilt on the Conscience of the Judge So that still the Subject People are innocent in admitting the Acts of the Convention as Legal tho' really before God they had been Unrighteous Judges Yet because you herein sharpen a Dart against the King and Queen tho' I never intended my Objection to such a Reflection the Case you set is not parallel to ours For the Convention sate not in Judgment between the Father and Son and Daughter the Father not being subject in Law nor submitting his Cause to them but when the Father had left his Royal Estate the Prince calls them together to settle the forsaken State of the Kingdom which they did as it now stands And as this Judgment was in Form Legal and Authoritative so you cannot prove it immoral or injurious For as the Estates were not concerned to enquire into the temper of Spirit in the Contest between the Father and the Children toward each other which was not of Civil Cognizance so they debated only the Civil Purposes of King James's Actions and how the state of this Land might be legally and securely fixed after his Desertion in which they acted as Legal Judges and no otherwise What was done before or out of Convention by any of the Members and the inner motions and aims of particular mens minds there sitting during these agitations these are extrajudicial and so not chargeable on the whole Court as a Council of State as being no parts of their formal Determinations Dyscher So for your Robbers and Pirates a man may lawfully suffer by them tho' it were better if he could escape it But if you will plead that their Robberies and Piracies are lawful if you say they acquire a just Right to what they get by such wicked means or if you actually joyn with them and rob and share in their Booties you will be as very a Rogue as they and which is most like the Case I leave others to judge T. B's 2d Lett. p. 24. Eucher This it seems is your reply to what I said * Sol. Ab. p. 6. That Wars and Victories are many times unjust yet they that suffer the injury lawfully submit to the unlawful and injurious demand of Submission as in Piracies and other like Tyrannies And is not this a pretty Refutation of that Assertion to say that all that assert assist and share in Wrong are Rogues The reason of my instance was that such Pirates and Tyrants often seize on such as they have no Right of Dominion over and may perhaps threaten to torture or destroy them except they submit and contract
Opinion must concede in order to Publick Peace So that here your imprudent Zeal on false Notions of Loyalty hurries you into Principles absolutely Seditious and Destructive to the Legal Constitution of all Governments and particularly that which the Kings of England have themselves established Dyscher Well to put an End to this Disquisition upon our own Laws what have you to say for the Legality or fulness of your Settlement from the Usages or customary Practice of Nations Eucher I hope you do not require me to corrade a vast heap of Historical Instances National Decrees and Determinations of Civilians hereupon This would be to repeat whole Libraries to an evidence of one particular Custom But your own reading will inform you that under the pressing exigences of Anarchy and Ruin the Superiors or Agents of all People have ever authentically contracted a change of Government and Governours as to them then appeared necessary to the Common Preservation Dyscher 'T is so indeed upon Conquests which some have pretended here to the shame reproach and forfeiture of their Country as well as in contradiction to common Sense the pretences of your King and the Sense of your Parliament But where there are no Conquests 't is not so easie to adduce such Custom of Nations Eucher That the Nation was not conquered is most evident yet that King William in the Military Course grew stronger than King James who disbanded all his Forces and stooped to the prevailing Prince is as evident nor was this any False Doctrine in the sense of the Nation But to assert that hereby alone the Right of the Crown accrued to King William even without the consequent Admission and Contract of the Nation had he pleased to have taken it on the meer Right of the Sword is what is indeed contrary to all Law and Reason For the meer force or victory of the Sword gives no Right or Authority even over a vanquished People till they federally resign to the Conqueror and then much less doth it so in a Nation not conquered But to omit the Laws of pure Conquests there are instances enough of Abdications Cessions and Desertions as many I believe and more than of simple and proper Victories to set out the sense of all Nations by For upon all such the places quitted admitted such consequent Settlements as the straits they were cast into would permit as is manifest in the leaving of Garrisons Holds or Countries And the truth is there is the same reason upon all proper Conquests and other Surrendries that legitimates the admission of a Change viz. the necessity of preserving the Publick Body from ruins and devastations Dyscher I do not remember indeed any ininstance to the contrary in the practices of Nations for they perhaps have been and are as bad as we ready to for shift themselves upon any pinch but generally careless of and perfidious to their unfortunate Princes Interests But what Reason can you shew for it in our Case which is so very plain and obvious that we were at liberty to have preserved our Sovereign and our selves together and if so how can this Settlement be admitted for legal or be reputed full against the so just Claims of our real Sovereign Eucher Here again you transgress the proper limits of a private Judgment when you take upon you to say that we i. e. our Convention could have secured King James in his Throne and this Nation in its Rights and Properties But in the main point where you stick viz. the Consent of King James and your Prince of Wales you are very unreasonable For shall he who at last put all his Subjects into confusion by his leaving the Government hinder us from settling till he give us his Consent Or must the Consent of a Infant be waited who if he ever was or yet is is in the custody and disposal of an Enemy King who would settle him and us too with a witness if he had but a lucky Wind and a fair Opportunity It is possible that an offended Prince may meditate revenge on a People that will not yield up all to the insatiable claims of boundless Prerogative And Desertion would be the cheapest surest and severest way of revenge if they must never settle again till he please to authorize them and this truly would be the strangest of all Prerogatives There are also that say that King James's Priests counselled and his Queen engaged him to go off on this very account that we might fall into such Plagues thro' our Divisions and unsettled Looseness as should enable him to return with an absolute plenitude of Arbitrary Power But not to depend on uncertain fames with their oblique constructions what can the legal language of that Cession speak to his Loyal People but this I have disbanded my Army and will not contest it with the Sword I shift for my self and must leave you to shift for your selves and settlement as you can Since I yield to my fears and necessities so may you If even a Natural Parent to save his own life leaves his Son to the mercy of his Enemies the Son may contract Peace and subjection to that his Fathers Enemy for his own preservation nor can the meer Natural Relation and Interest of the Father in the Son vacate moral Obligation of such Contract till that power of his Enemy over his Son be otherwise legally dissolved by the Laws of War Redemption or otherwise So that tho' we should allow you that all King James's Enemies sinned in procuring this new Settlement upon us all yet his most Loyal Subjects may most innocently submit from the reason of the thing and the virtual Concession hereunto in the voice of his Desertion which must be supposed as made to his faithful Adherents tho' not to his Enemies So that should he ever return again he could not in any justice punish the meer submission to this new Settlement in those who contributed nothing to it And you that refuse it refuse that liberty which his Desertion legally gave you by all Civil Interpretations All which put together should be of great might with you to admit the present submission as Legal Nor ought his resumed Contests to be taken as Legal or just bars to the contrary For if there were such a Virtual and Legal Concession in his Desertion the Estates of his People taking the benefit of it have provided for us a Settlement upon that Concession which being passed and confirmed the supposed revocation of that Concession by a new War or Inauthoritative Declarations is null void and unobliging And so here was tho' not a Verbal yet a Legal Censent of King James which is as much as you your selves can in reason require to the justifying our present Submission and to the plenitude of our present Settlement Dyscher * T. B's 2d Lett. p. 21. These are pretty tricks to catch Dotterils But above all your most amazing pretence for your Cause
rejection of the Proposals for an Assertion of Right But I presage that all this procedure of the Sanhedrin or my Accounts of it will pass with you for pretty juggling who are so dextrous and hardy to reproach whole Nations as if you had been another Elias tho' herein I would advise you to premit your Reasons to your Censure In the Interim we will in the third place ascend to their Majesties intention herein Of which I shall in general say that no Man can evince that they intended any more in their imposition of the Oath than the Estates but if they did those personal intentions came not into the Act or Oath and so can be of no publick cognisance or obligation the Oath being made to satisfie their Majesties intentions indeed as far as they were uniform with the intention of the Estates but no further or otherwise And the Estates did indeed desire to satisfy their Majesties as far as justly they could without crucifying the Conscience of the Subject which could contribute nothing to the interest of their Majesties nor to the Honour of their Tenderness and Clemency So that the Question properly is whether the joint and complex intention of their Majesties and the Parliament in the Oath was That we should judge them to be a King and Queen that had no Right And here I answer that they never intended that we should deny the Right of their Title in Thought Word or Deed. Nay I add that in the Recognition they designed to create an Opinion and Belief in us of their Majesties Right as far as the publick Judgment of a Nation can morally conduce thereunto and also to silence all Tongues and Pens to the contrary but of what they gently willed Men to believe they did not presume to require a peremptory Oath thro' their excessive Tenderness for liberty of Conscience Now the intention we are upon by the good leave of the Syllogism is not the inclining will to perswade us to a Belief nor the authoritative will of silencing contradictions but that will which imposes the Oath i. e. what they willed and intended peremptorily to be sworn And this does not import so much as an assent or Belief much less an absolute assertion de Jure tho' King William is de Jure in the publick Judgment of the Nation And what ground have you to fancy that this is not satisfactory to their Majesties Their Right is publickly recognized a full Allegiance of the Subject upon Oath given with sufficient Laws for the Coercion of Recusants and all that is necessary to secure them in the Throne and can you dare to say they are not hereby satisfied because every Man is not bound to swear the Jus which many feeble Senses may not understand I hope you never heard of any Complaint made hereupon by their Majesties and if not 't is a bold and indecent Suggestion to object or surmise it but the most frontless rudeness of all is to say that the Nation was Tricked and open Nonsense to assert this of a project of concealing an intention of Right in words which you say manifestly include it Dyscher No doubt both Parliaments had the same intention and the Recognition was but a fuller Declaration of the Sense of the former Parliament in the Constitution And for such Bodies to ensnare us to a Belief of K. William's Right while we are taking Oaths to him is if not to command yet to insinuate Perjury since they that are hereby tricked into that Opinion intend the assertion of it in the Oath and the Opinion of Right being the Publick Doctrine the publick taking of the Oath without an express Denial of the Right doth either really or seemingly at least import an Assertion of Right and so gives a just Scandal to all Men of Integrity as looking like an Exemplary consent to and Profession of the Right and is as Exemplary a Snare to the Consciences of the Ignorant * T. B. Sec. Lett. p. 22. For has not William ravished away the Rights of all the Royal Heirs in Being Has he not violated the standing Laws of our Succession in seizing the Crown before his time Eucher To humour you for once let us suppose that K. William and Q. Mary had violated the Laws of Succession and so were not every way de Jure Sovereign yet the Assertion of Right being rejected at the framing of the Oath a little Care will remove all prejudices in our selves and others by observing that we swear no more than was expresly imposed in the form of the Oath with an explicit exclusion of that Assertion of Right and that other points and Acts consequent fall not under our intention by the will of the imposers against their Will But 't is in truth a bold thing but like you to take it for evident that their Majesties have broken the Laws of Succession when the whole Kingdom hath judicially determined otherwise 'T is indeed possible for a publick Opinion to be Erroneous and a private one on the contrary true yet nothing but an undeniable as it were Meridian Evidence must practically confront a publick Opinion against its Civil efficacy which I suppose you have not gotten against the Civil Judgment de Jure I will not here proceed on such Originals of Royal Title as will justifie Changes of Kings every day I will not cast in my Lot nor mix my Counsels with those seditious Men who by cajoling the Subjects into false Notions and aims of Power cokes them thereby into endless Ruins and Commotions I will only follow the good Ancient and constant Rules of Order Peace and Righteousness which alone can make us an happy People and Advocate for their Majesties Innocency toward these The ordinary Rule of Succession I still grant you to be Lineal or properly Hereditary so that if a Prince's Tenure be extinct by Death or otherwise the next Heir of ordinary Course should succeed But if a Question arise upon the Tenure whether permanent or cessant in a state of Anarchy and actual vacancy in the Throne or who is the next Heir this is most properly determinable by the Estates of the Kingdom as being our Masters and Trustees to oblige and direct our Allegiance Here then they judged King James's Tenure cessant by a virtual Abdication and the Princess of Orange the next Heir But considering the then state of Affairs they judged it absolutely lawful and necessary for the time being with the smooth concession of the two next Heirs apparent to invest the Order during the Prince's Life It was therefore changed but not violated and a temporary Change in the Course was admitted to secure the true Descent in a just Line for ever as appears by the settled and determined Series of Successors Dyscher Very well I see you and your Estates make nothing of the Prince of Wales But your Prince of Orange had before not only assaulted our Law but overturned the Government
and the Sovereign too and can you say that he violated not our Laws in his way to the Crown Eucher The Prince of Orange being no Subject of England the process of his Expedition was in him no violation of Duty by him owing to our Laws which is the only form of Guilt that could have attainted his Right If then he cannot be charged with the breach of Civil Duties incumbent on him he is not incapacitated of Rights by any passages in that Expedition But moreover he came to preserve our Laws and Forms Liberties and Religion when they were all in a fervent Course of subversion And therefore tho' during his Marches the Execution of the Laws for the time being was interrupted in particular Cases and Military Officers were by him constituted in the Countries thro' which he passed all this was necessary as methods of Medicine for the time to recover the diseased state of the Patient to the Antient vigour of its Laws and soundness of Constitution But when King James left the languishing Nation unhealed the Prince left all to be legally Cured and firmly setled to the great Council of the Land that so no Man might have a Colour for Complaint that he affected our Conquest Vassalage or Suppression in our Civil Rights by any Arbitrary Power For which great Service they found out a fair way without Violence to any ones Right to gratify and honour him with the Crown or rather to secure all we had by such a Constitution If then the Prince of Orange was no Subject nor Enemy to the Nation but Friend and Patron to us and our Laws how can he be charged with an injurious violation of them And her present Majesty tho' more obliged to her Husband than her Father by the ties of Nature being a Native of England and so the King 's Subject in this Land never appeared here to disturb her Father or break her Native Allegiance But when her Father had fled out of the Kingdom from before her Husband as not daring to abide a Parliamentary discussion of their Causes and the Estates of the Nation determined to settle her Highness with her Husband in this Sovereignty she being thereupon sent to comes over and accepts that Settlement which the Nation thought so just and necessary and to which as such the Princess Ann conceded without any Remonstrance So that neither can her present Majesty be charged with any breach of our Constitutions herein which might obstruct her Civil Title of being Queen de Jure upon the Cession of her Father and her next Place in the Succession Which is I think so fair a Plea for the Recognition de Jure that if it cannot annihilate all prejudices to the contrary in all Persons yet is a just Reason to inhibit Contradictions in private Men who have very little Authority to Censure Publick Counsels and Determinations But tho' we have thus defended the Title de Jure yet as I said before we were not obliged to Swear it Nor did I ever hear of any Courts that loaded the Oath with such an Assertion of Right when their directive Judgments were required thereupon Dyscher This last is a lucky Hit I am glad you have awakened my Memory of some of your former Passages upon Interpretations of Courts for which you ought to be a little chastised For you say * Sol. Ab. pag. 10. That if they took not the Oath as the Parliament intended they took it as directed by their Majesties Judges What did their Majesties Judges direct the Oath to be taken otherwise than as the Parliament intended I desire that may be made out Did they do it judicially in Court I think that will not be so much as pretended If it be I desire to know when where and how If you say that a Judge did only discourse it privately that is no more than if any private Man had said so But to take off the pretence of this Salvo the Judges are not nor do pretend to be the Imposers And the Imposers King William and Queen Mary and both Houses of Parliament have declared what their Sense of the Oath is viz. that King William and Queen Mary are King and Queen de Jure M. S. Reflex Eucher This is no fairer in one respect than it is convincing in any For you repeat me as if I had asserted some general Sense of the Judges given to the Nation plainly contrary to the Sense of the Parliament according to which Judicial contrary Sense all Conformists had Sworn and so require me to make this out But my Senses are not so easy to be imposed on in my own Sentiments My Discourse therefore was * Sol. Ab. pag. 9 10. of the Senses of some particular Courts given or admitted to particular Persons upon occasional Consultations And I alledge that these Persons who were allowed an innocent Sense to Swear to did not prevaricate with the State tho' the Courts perhaps had really misinterpreted the Law But so far am I from the positive Charge of any Court herewith that I profess I neither know nor believe any Court to have incurred such a failure tho' this I have heard some of them burthened with by some of your greatest Woâ—â—hies And upon supposition of Truth in that impuâ—â—tion I yet assumed the Cause of the Swearers notwithstanding such supposed Error in such Courts according to whose Interpretation of the Oath if they Swore they could not be perjured or prevaricate For tho' the Judges of those Courts be not the Legislative yet are they Ministerial and Executive Imposers Judges and Interpreters for the Legislative to particular Persons on all emergent Questions in Law and what they herein do is valid to all Civil Constructions and Effects and to be taken as their Majesties own legal determinations of whom you too unwarily as well as untruly say that they and the Parliament have declared the Assertion or sense de Jure to be in the Oath for tho' that be the recognized Sense of their Title yet it is not their declared Sense of the Oath Which being cleared I need no Succour from the private Opinions of any Judges out of Court of which I made no mention which can indeed have no judicial obligations tho' by your Favour they may be of great weight to the satisfaction or Ease of a doubting Conscience towards its Conformity with the Laws Dyscher Indeed if the real Sense of the Imposer could be avoided and what Sense others please imposed the Oath might be taken in a thousand several Senses and not one come up with the Sense and design of the Imposers which in this Case always is the security of the Government Besides a thousand other Mischiefs would follow vacating all Oaths and destructive to all Governments and Human Society For if Oaths may be thus eluded Promises and Contracts would soon follow their Fortune as being less Sacred Now Sir you would do well to answer these and
no more divinely instituted than the lowest Orders of Levi tho' he was to higher Services Nor is the Doctor less mistaken in his extraordinary Esteem and Elogy of the Annual Expiation as more noble than any Episcopal Functions For notwithstanding all its Solemnities and Operations yet its highest Excellency was but Typical of that Grace which was not given by Moses but by Jesus Christ And all its actual present Energy reached no further than a legal imaginary Cleansing of the Body of the Jews and this only for one Year past and that only for the securing him in the Temporal benefits promised in that Law But our Priestly Functions are not merely Typical of Grace not yet given but both commemorative and exhibitory also of that Grace which hath already appeared for the Salvation of all Men and consecrates the Souls and Bodies of Men unto Immortality not to mention the extraordinary Measure of the Spirit collated in the especial Acts of Episcopal Ordinations In all which interiour Sanctifications tho' there is no Transubstantiation yet is there a mystical Union betwixt Christ and his Members by the illuminating Communion of the Holy Spirit For which truth it is needful that we contend tho' I confess it was needless for him to contend against it And yet further supposing all this had been right which the Doctor hath dictated yet here arises another Infelicity in his Logic For tho' God might admit an intruded High-Priest yet it does not follow that Men may admit an intruded Bishop for can Man pretend to all the Authorities of God God is indeed superior to all his own Institutions and may dispense with them or ratifie Violations of them as he did the violent Successions in the Kings of Israel But does it follow that Men can lawfully without any Divine Dispensation given and granted admit the Violations of his Laws and the perverters of that Hierarchy which he has made organical to the Sanctity and Salvation of his Church Nay further yet the Doctor is very unaccurate in his very State of the Question which properly is not whether any Man may lawfully succeed an Ecclesiastic deposed by a Lay-power for if we grant that there can be any such Lay-deposition no doubt the Succession may be lawful but the Question is whether there can be any Ecclesiastical Deposition inflicted on Spiritual Orders by a Lay-power This is that we and our Fathers complain of that the Lay-powers enact Spiritual Censures of Suspension and Deprivation which your Ecclesiastics admit as regular and valid which were they so we should not quarrel at the Successions This I am sure is our Question whatsoever that of the Baroccian Treatise is if this differs from ours then in that respect the Treatise is impertinently adduced in our Case Besides the Question is not whether a Person duly invested with an Ecclesiastic Office of God's Institution may not be deposed by any Lay power For if God in the Jewish Church did subject their Ecclesiastics to a Lay-deposition no doubt in the Nature of the thing it might be lawful But the Question is whether first God did so subject the Jewish Ecclesiastics to such a Lay-authority And secondly supposing that God had so subjected their Ecclesiastics the next Question is whether he hath in like manner so subjected the Christian Hierarchy For if there be any specific Difference or intentional Disparity in the Nature and Purposes of the Jewish and Christian Religions if there have been such Changes admitted by God in the Authorities of one which have not been so conceded upon the Authorities of the other then the Argument from the Jewish doth not conclude upon the Christian Hierarchy And therefore by the Doctor 's leave not only the Divinity of the Institution but the Nature of the Offices and the Rules of Tenure and Succession instituted by God in his Church are to be considered in this Debate For to put the matter into a short Theory I think it fairly possible to conceive that the Jewish Religion in what it was peculiarly Jewish was only of a carnal Sanctity in Order only to Temporal Fruitions and so might be under the Conduct of Temporal Powers that are the Supreme Guardians of all Temporal Enjoyments but the Christian Religion is purely Spiritual not subordinated to Temporal Ends and so not under the like Authority of Temporal Powers Now whatsoever are the civil Authorities about matters Christian I suppose the Essential Differences of our Religion from the Jewish will bar the Argument for the same Rules of Subjection And if you please upon another Consultation to propose the matter to the Doctor 's second Thoughts I will be at the pains of repeating my Observations hereupon †Sol. and Ab. Pag. 21 22. First that the whole Institution of the Levitical Law was not of a Spiritual but carnal Sanctity yielded them by God somewhat in opposition and somewhat in conformity to the Aegyptian or other foreign Religions among whom the Priesthood had been long subjected to and perhaps first instituted by the Scepter And herein the Supreme Judgments in Civils upon the Law and Oracular Responses upon Consultations about Peace War and Temporal Actions and Successes were essential to the Authority of the Pontificate And yet we find this High-Priest not subject to any ordinary Power till Kings were also given this People after the manner of the Nations among whom the Mitre was subject to the Crown All which put together makes Abiathar 's Deprivation by a Temporal Power under that Constitution Legal But from the beginning it was not so Then there were Priests who till the Flood had the Government of the World without any Civil or Military Power and that Priesthood was in all its Intentions Spiritual So that when our Saviour came not only to restore but even to refine upon the primitive Rules he restored the Priesthood from Vassalage and founded his Hierarchy not in Princes but Apostles not inarmed but in unarmed Powers But if among the Nations of old the carnal Priesthoods were subject to Arbitrary and Imperial Powers and God conceded the Jews Kings with such Power after that Gentile manner the Jewish High-Priests thereupon became Subject not only to a Judicial but Imperial Authority and so legally deprivable at the pleasure of the secular Prince so far at least that these Censures might be effectually valid tho' not always good and just And hence all the Changes of the High-Priests violently and arbitrarily made by heathen Princes in the Jewish Pontificate seem to be legally and regularly valid ex jure Imperii toties quoties and so are nothing at all to the Case of an uncanonical Deprivation or the Doctor 's purpose But our Priesthood has nothing Civil in it nor is by God subjected to the Arbitrary Empire of Princes that so we should think our selves obliged to bow down our Faith and Freedom to such feeble Principles of Spiritual Bondage and Pusillanimity Eucher But a little to
valid yet because of their actual Omission it wanted an Ecclesiastical Effect Lev. 10. So when a Statute of Deprivation requires the Church to eject Recusants from their Stations if the cause be necessary or just the Statute is valid to oblige the Conscience of the Church to an executive and concurrent obedience yet if the Church will by no means yield to such command of the State whether just or unjust valid or invalid in its obligatory intentions it cannot actually pass into an Ecclesiastical Effect and Issue and all that the Civil Powers can do on the refusal is to subject the Church to temporal Punishments Nay in the same Genus of Civil Government the Decrees and Judgments of the Kings Courts notwithstanding their perfect justice and validity cannot have their Civil Effect if the subordinate officers neglect or refuse to execute them T is true there is a difference between the Civil obligations of Under-Officers to their Superiors in Secular Authorities and those of the Church to the Civil Powers in matters Ecclesiastical For that Civil Officers are obliged only to observe the Legal forms of process in the Orders of their Superiors and are not tied to enquire into the inner justice of those Orders But the Church when under any Laws or Commands of the State may and ought to judge for her self and her conscience toward God Whether the matters enjoyned her by the Laws be consistent with the Laws and Principles of Christianity and the Churches fundamental Constitution against which she is never to admit them to an Ecclesiastical Effect but must bear the penal Consequences with all meeknes and resignation And this is not only the Right and Duty of all Churches as sacred Corporations toward all humane laws in matters moral or Religious but of every single Christian also And if this be not admitted up goes Hobbism and the Civil Powers may enact Deprivations Excommunications and Anathema's for mens refusing the Alcoran Paganism Socinianisme and even Atheism it self and for owning the Scriptures Creeds and Sacraments But you that think us such a soft and waxen generation would have found this Right asserted even unto Martyrdom against all such deprivations had they been enacted upon causes apparently injurious or imposed on the Church For in the late Reign not only you but others also opposed the growth and menaces of Popery with a burning zeal when we had no present prospect of any thing but Fagots Dragons and most Christian Bridles And that all these Armies of Worthies should all of a sudden grow base abject and irreligious cannot easily I am sure not fairly be presumed But in cases which the Church judges equal she may concur and submitt and when she may so do it can be neither religious or prudential to provoke or incur a persecution by a needles and obstinate refusal which is our Sense upon the Causes and Law of the present Deprivations But is it not a pretty exception against this Concurrence because it is yielded by Submission not Authority For did I ever assert of an Authority in the Church to refuse her Duty against which certainly there lies no Authority And I told you †Sol. and Ab. pag. 28. that the Church here concurs by Submission as judging it her duty herein to yield to the State But in such Cases if you will needs require the Churches Authority I will remind you what I told you †Sol. and Ab. Pag. 29. last time that the Church has an Authoritative Right to judge in such Cases whether she may or must concur or no. And hence a Right essentially belongs to it to examin all the Causes of the Secular Demands so that if she finds there be no grave Reasons to move the Church to the required Severities she ought to disobey as my Lord Bishop of London well did when required to suspend Dr. Sharp indictâ Causâ c. And for this I alledged out of Nazianzen one of the Noblest Instances in all Antiquity wherein the Bishops of Cappadocia refused to depose or reject the canonically settled Bishop of Cesarea notwithstanding all Julians terrors and commands of which I wonder Dr. Hody took no notice But I add also that if the Church finds those Causes sufficient she may if necessary she must admit the Laws enforcing them and not wantonly pretend Authority against duty nor use her liberty for a cloak of maliciousness And I can never imagine that this Right of the Church was ever suspected much less opposed by any Powers or Legislators truly Christian But if Civil Powers will make irreligious Laws in maters Spiritual will you immediatly oblige the Christian Councils to invade the Senate House or Courts of Civil Judicature with Protestations against their Procedures before the Laws come home upon us and press us to actual Concurrence Surely the Primitive Christians did not so against the Edicts of Heathen Powers For tho' Christianity will warrant meek and petitionary Apologies yet will it not justifie sawcy Remonstrances and Prohibitions upon Legislators who must pass undisturbed and unaffronted in their measures and we must with all meekness of behaviour wait the eventual prosecution of the Laws if we cannot divert it by fair atonement and when it comes refusing calmly the required Sins commit our selves and Cause to him that judgeth righteously So that all your Harangues about running into Parliament House with Proclamations or Protestations for our against their Authority are injudicious immodest and seditious proposals tho' we had known the demands of the State to have been unlawful which we yet acknowledge to be otherwise And that we should cease to be a Church because we are not officiously rude to the Legislators who may sometimes happen to be causelesly unkind or hard hearted to us We are neither to precipitate our zeal manners confession or sufferings but let the will of God be done upon us when his own time comes Since even the vilest Laws of men have this obligation and validity upon the Consciences of Subjects to restrain all indecencies and disturbances against them and the Legislative For if the Senate has not Authority to oblige us to evil it has to modesty and abstinence from their Presence and Consultations But the Parliament thought their Authority alone sufficient to deprive the Bishops and did not ask nor think they wanted the concurrence of the Clergy to make their Act valid very well they did not think so And if you confine this sufficiency to a valid Obligation on the Church to submit and concur this opinion of the Parliament is very true tho' I believe they ground it not upon any mere pretended Arbitrary Despotick Power but upon the Weight and Sanctity of the Causes on which they founded the Law But if you think it the opinion of the Parliament that their Acts can actually pass into an Ecclesiastical Effect without Ecclesiastical Concurrence you fix an opinion on them rather to be charged with Non-sense than Falshood
the Election of Bishops had been freely left to our Convocations they would have admitted few or none of those whom our Kings have advanced but yet the Chapters electing have consented to the Legality of those Nominations which they have not always judged so expedient and the Episcopal Colledge have consented to their Communion with the rest of the Clergy as well in as out of Convocation as no doubt they will with the new Archbishop at their next meeting without breaking any Silence against him by way of Dissent And now at last I am come to your Questions about the Deposition of Episcopacy And first you say the Bishops and Clergy of Scotland are silent under the Abolition of Episcopacy it self and twit me that hereby belike they concur to that Act of Abolition No Brother this does not follow from me but according to you their Silence is a betraying their Right But here again you cannot distinguish the Case of quitting a Personal Right to an Authority which is our Case from the Abolition of the Authority it self Universally which is the Case of Scotland For they that can legally do the former may not legally do the latter For the King can depose the Judges but not the Courts and dismiss other Officers whose Offices he cannot abrogate And the Church can depose Priests and Bishops but not the Priesthood or Episcopacy And whether any Civil State has more intrinsick Power in the Spirituals of the Church than the Church her self ever had in most perfect Freedom judge you But here I must Advocate for the Bishops and Clergy of Scotland against your Calumnies For tho' they made no formal Protestation at Parliament yet they assert their Episcopacy by an avowed Communion of their own and a renunciation of the Presbyterian Model But as to the Civil Power of abrogating Episcopacy here I answer 't is as great as 't is any where but I find not our Parliaments to pretend to the same Opinions here as they do in Scotland and I hope you will not require me to justifie Scottish Pretensions I think the Constitutions of our Orders are founded on Divine Rules and have descended to us by Traditions truly Catholic and Primitive which here we are not so rude to profane or violate by any wanton Claims of Arbitrary Power and in my Opinion the Scots will never acquit themselves well to God his Church and the King till they copy after us where Episcopacy is as well secured as the Scriptures and Sacraments and all the most essential Parts of Christianity But if any of these ever happen to be persecuted here I hope we shall remember Him who on all such Occasions requires us to take up the Cross and follow him And now we are upon this melancholy Speculation of the Church of Scotland I fear the Presages you have made from their fall have been most influential with you to your present Recusancy to those Powers from whom you expect our Dissolution This I confess is a very deplorable jealousie for which if there had been sufficient ground as there was not yet this will not justifie Recusancy to the Civil Powers But the mischief of it is more than Personal and Temporary For hereby the Deprived Fathers who by their glorious merits in the last Reign might have been useful Mediators for the Scotch Church and Promoters of our own are now become uncapable of this second Glory and useless to the Churches happiness by this unfortunate Recusancy But herein I charge no man's Conscience but only bewail the infelicity And shall pray that the Goodness of God will so graciously dispose our Tempers and Affairs as in his own good time to set all things at Right and shew us at length the Light of his countenance Dyscher But let me put these things closely to your Conscience do you verily believe that your Church and Chapters admit the Ecclesiastical Change upon the merits of the Cause and not merely on the fear or acknowledged Authority of the State Eucher I do believe so in very deed just as I have spoken and my reason is because had the Act of Deprivation past for recusancy of Mahometism c. and the Church would never have forsaken their Diocesans nor elected any other even Orthodox Bishops the Act for Deprivation being impious and for that cause unobliging and as loose as Dr. Hody's Rules and as strait as your Principles are I put it close home to his and your Consciences whether on a Case so put or supposed you can think the contrary Dyscher Your jumble of Queen Mary's and Queen Elizabeth Bishops I shall not examine because a full answer to that either already is or suddenly will come abroad Eucher This is what above all I have ever greatly coveted and I have of late been so lucky as to meet with the Sense of †Part 2. Chap. 3. Pag. 33 34. your excellent Author of Christian Communion on this point But because you have hinted to me my shortness of memory I had rather have it repeated from your memory that we may discuss it Dyscher Indeed it was almost lapsed but now upon your Suggestion I have recovered it and will accordingly lay it before you As to this Case of the Marian Bishops saith he or of other Popish Bishops ander Edward the Sixth two things are to be noted in their removal and ejection out of their Bishoprick's One is from the Temporalities the Benefices and Preferments thereof and these Temporal Endowments are directly subjects to the Temporal Power c. The other is from the Spiritual adherence and dependence of the People on them as on heads of Church unity and Communion for religious ministrations And this there was no need to deprive the Popish Bishops of for they had already deprived themselves of it by their own Corruptions both in Doctrines and Devotions Adulterations of Religion and corrupt ministrations of the word of Prayers and Sacraments break the Ligaments which tye on People to this adherence to any Bishops or Pastors yea tho' they were Apostles themselves Tho' we or an Angel from Heaven preach any other Gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you let him be anathema or accursed saith St. Paul Gal. 1.8 When therefore any Bishops and Pastors instead of heading Christian Truth appear at the head of Vn-Christian Errors the people are discharged from their Obligation and Dependence upon them and are to unite themselves as they can to others who still keep firm to that necessary Truth and Gospel Worship which they have forsaken And this was done by the Popish Bishops who fed the people with false Doctrines and polluted Prayers and Ministrations which left no need of any thing more to deprive them of the Peoples Communion and Dependence these Papal Corruptions of Religious Ministrations being enough to discharge and drive them away of themselves So that the reformed Bishops when they were set at the heads of those Dioceses called