his presence would bridle and restrain the people but Lycurgus applyed not himself unto either being resolved to frame both into one Common wealth To the form of this Common-wealth you say That whatsoever the King loâ—â— the people got little by this alteration being left out of all employment in affairs of State and forced to yeild obedience unto 30. Masters whereas before they had but two A strong affirmation seeing the Oracle containing the Model of Lacedemon is thus recorded by your Author When thou hast devided the people into Tribes and Lineages thou shalt establish the Senate consisting with the two Kings of thirty Senators and assemble the people as there shall be occasion where the Senaâ—e shall propose and dismiss the people without suffering them to debate Now who seeth not that the people having no right to debate must therefore have had the right to resolve or else were to be assembled for nothing But the ultimate result is the soveraign Power in every Government It is true the Greek of the Oracle is absolute and abstruce but then it is not only interpreted by Plutarch in the sense I have given but by the verses of the Poet Tyrteus which the Kings themselves though they would have made other use of acknowledged unto the people to be Authentique They having of Apollo sought This Oracle from Delphos brought Vnto the Spartan Kings among The Senators it doth belong To moderate in Royal Chairs And give their votes in all Affairs And when they have proposed these The people chuse what are they please Of many other testimonies I shall add no more then one out of Isocrates I am not ignorant saith he to the Areopagites that the Lacedemonians flourish for this cause especially that their Government is popular To the infirmity of this form and the cure of it you say That the Royalty and power of the Kings being thus impaired the people absolutely discharged from having any hand at all in publique Government and the Authority of the Senate growing every day more insolent and predominant by reason that albeit the Senators were elected by the people they had their places for tearm of life the Kings resolved upon a course of putting the people into such a condition as might inable them to curb and controul the Senatours to which end they ordained the Ephori Magistrates to be annually chosen out of the body of the people In which first you make that to be a practise of the Kings against the Senate which by your Author is plain to have been a combination of the Kings and the Senate against the people for the people upon the insolency and predominancy of the Kings and the Senate fell as in that case the inevitable nature of them upon counsel how to defend themselves and so assumed the power of debate Hereupon the Kings Theopompus and Polidore would have added unto the tenour of the Oracle that if the people went about by debate to change the propositions of the Senate it should be lawful for the Kings and Senate to null the result of the people which practise if it had past must have made the Kings and the Senate altogether uncontroulable Wherefore the people incensed at it put a bitt into the mouth of the Senate by the institution of the Ephori This is the clear sence of Plutarch which he taketh out of Plato who affirmeth the Ephorate to have been set up against the Hereditary Power of the Kings with whom agree both Aristotle and Cicero the former affirming in as much as the people have obtained it were quiet and the latter that the Ephori in Lacedemon were so opposed to the Kings as the Tribunes in Rome to the Consuls Now if other Authors attribute the institution of Ephori unto the Kings and there be a story as well affirmed by Plutarch as others that Theopompus having created the Ephori and being told by his Queen he had done that which would leave narrower power to his children answered well that it would leave narrower but longer This is neither any riddle nor kind of contradiction to the former sense seeing when we say that Hen. 3. instituted the Parliament to be assistant to him in his Government we do no more doubt of that then how it is to be understood nor if his Queen had said as she of Lacedemon and our King had made the like answer would that have altered any thing or proved the woman to have been as you well have it the better Prophet seeing either Government lasted longer for either Reformation nor came to alter but through the alteration of the Ballance which was nothing to the womans Prophecy The ruine of this Ballance and corruption of the Common wealth you wholly omit to the end that picking up your objections against the Government in vigour Out of the rubbish and dissolution of it you may cast dust in mens eyes or perswade them that the Ephori trusting to the power and interest they had in the Commonalty came to usurp upon the Kings and to be Tyrants as they are called by Plato and Aristotle so you affirm But the truth is thus recorded by Plutarch in the life of Agis So soon as the Lacedemonians having ruined Athens became so full of gold and silver the Common-wealth began to break Nevertheless the lots and division of Lands made by Lycurgus yet remaining the equality of the foundation held good till Epitadeus an ill natured fellow became Ephore and having a mind to dis-inherit his son got a Law to pass whereby any man might dispose of his lot as he pleased This by him pursued of meet malice to his son was hurried on by the avarice of others whose riches came thus to eat the people out of their lands that in a short time there remained not above an hundred Free holders in all Sparta This he shews to have been the rise of the Oligarchy The Oligarchy thus ballanced totally excluded the people and murthered Agis the first King that was ever put to death by the Ephori and to these times about which Plato and Aristotle lived relateth that tyranny which they who as was shown commended the Ephorate in the Common-wealth now laid unto it in Oligarchy Thus have you fetcht an argument against a Common-wealth that are nothing to it Again whereas Agis and Cleomenes by the restitution of the lots of Lycurgus were Asserters of popular power you insinuate them to have been Asserters of Monarchy such is your play with humane Authors or as a Polititian Now let us see whether you have dealt any thing better with Scripture or been more careful as a Divine In order to this Discovery I shall repeat that piece of Calvin which you call the stumbling block of disobedience Calvin having preached obedience to your good approbation comes at length to this expression But still I must be understood of private persons for if there be now any popular Officers ordained to
cutting off and tearing up all roots that do naturally shoot and spring up into such branches To conclude if the Congregation of the People in law to be made had such power as was shewn and in the law so made the ultimate Appeal lay unto the Sanhedrim why are not here two Estates in this Commonwealth each by Gods own Ordinance and both plain in Scripture Well but when they came you will say to make unto themselves Kings what ever power they had formerly was now lost this at best were but to dispute from the folly of a people against an Ordinance of God for what less is testified by himself in those words to Samuel They have not rejected thee but they have rejected me that I should not raign over them The Government of the Senate and the people is that onely which is or can be the Government of Lawes The Government of Lawes is that onely which is or can be the Government of God and not of men He that is for the Government of Lawes is for the Government of God and he that is for the Government of Man is for the Government of a Beast Kings no question where the ballance is Monarchical are of divine right and if they be good the grâ—atest blessing the Government so standing can be capable of but the ballance being popular as in Israel in the Gretian in the Scicilian Tyranny they are the direst curse that can befall a Nation Nor are Divines who will alwaies have them to be of divine right to be hearkened too seeing they affirm that which is clean contrary to Scripture for in this case saith Hosea They have set up Kings and not by me they have Princes I knew it not Pharoah may impose the making of Brick without the allowance of straw but God never required of any men or of any Government that they should live otherwise then according to their Estates It is true if a Man want make him a servant there are rules in Scripture that enjoyn him the duty of a servant but shew me the rule in Scripture that obligeth a man who can live of himself unto the duty of a servant Hath God less regard unto a Nation then a man yet the people of Israel continuing upon a popular Agrarian though God forewarned them that by this means they would make themselves servants would needs have a King whence saith the same Prophet O Israel thou hast destroyed thy self but in me is thine help I will be thy King which foretells the restitution of the Common-wealth Where is any other that may save thee in all thy Cities and thy Judges of whom thou saidst give me a King and Princes I gave thâ—e a King in mine anger that is in Saul and I took him away in my wrath that is in the Captivity so at least saith Rabbi Bechai with whom agreed Nachmony Gersâ—hoâ—e and others Kimchy it is true and Maimâ—â—ides are of opinion that the people making a King displeased God not in the matter but in the form onely as if the root of a Tree the ballance of a Government were form onely and not matter nor do our Divines yet who are divided into like parties see more then the Rabbies Both the Royalists and the Common wealths men of such sort that is whether Divines or Talmudists appeal unto the letter of the Law which the Royalists as the translators of the Bible render thus When they shall say the Commonwealths men aâ— Diodatus thus If thou come to say I will set a King over me like all the Nations that are about me thou shalt in any wise set him King over theâ— whom the Lord thy God shall chuse The one party will have the Law to be positive the other contingent and with a mark of detestation upon it for so where God speaketh of his peoples doing any thing like the Nations that were about them it is every where else understood but let these which are no niceties be as you will who seeth not that to argue from this place for the necessity of the King is as if one from that foregoing should argue for the necessity of the Judges The words are these Thou shall come unto the High Priest and to the Levite which as was said was unto the Sanhedrim and that is or to the Judge that shall be in those dayes yet that the Judge not by any necessity implyed in these words but through the meer folly of the people came to be set up in Israel is plain by Josephus where he showes that the Israelites laying by their Arms and betaking themselves unto their pleasures while they did not as God had commanded root out the Canaanites from among them but suffered them to dwell with them suffered also the form of their Commonwealth to be corrupted and the Senate to be broken the Senators nor other solemn Magistrates being Elected as formerly which both in word and fact is also confirmed by the Scripture In words as where it is thus written When Josuah had let the people go that is had dismissed the Army and planted them upon their popular ballance the children of Israel went every man unto his inheritance to possess the Land and the people served the Lord all the days of Josuah and all the days of the Elders that out lived Josuah that is while the Sanhedrim continued after him but when the Elders hereof came to dye and the people elected them no successors they did evil in the sight of the Lord and having broken their civil Orders forsook also their Religion the Government whereof depended upon the Sanhedrim and served Baalim And for the matter of fact included in these words it farther appears where Judah saith unto Simeon his brother Come up with me into my lot that we may fight against the Canaanites and I likewise will go with thee into thy lâ—t so Simeon went with him By which the Tribes leaguing at their pleasure one with another it is plain that the Sanhedrim their common ligament was broken now except a Man shall say that this neglect of Gods Ordinance was according unto the Law of God there is no disputing from that Law to the necessity of the Judge which hapned through no other then this Exigence quippe aut rex quod abominandum aut quod unum liberae civitatis consilium est Senatus habendus est wherefore the judge of Israel was not necessitated by the will of God but foreseen onely by his providence not imposed by the Law but provided by it as expedient in case of necessity and if no more can be pleaded from the Law for the Judge against whom God never declared much less is there to be pleaded from the same for the King against whom he declared so often There is nothing more clear nor certain in Scripture then that the Commonwealth of Israel was instituted by God the Judges and the King no otherwise then through the imprudence
and impotency of the people But you who have no better name for the people in a Commonwealth then the Rascal Rabble will have Kings at a venture to be of Divine right and to be absolute where as in truth if divine right be derived unto Kings from these of the Hebrews onely it is most apparent that no absolute King can be of Divine right For these Kings if they were such by the Law alledged then by the same Law they could neither multiply Horses nor wives nor Silver nor Gold without which â—o King can be absolute but were to keep all the words of this Law and these Statutes and so by consequence were regulated Monarchs nay could of right Enact no Law but as those by David for the reduction of the Ark for the regulation of the Priests for the Election of Solomon which were made by the suffrage of the people no otherwise then those under the Kings of Rome and ours under the late Monarchy what then is attributed by Calvin unto popular Magistrates that is not confirmed by Scripture and reason yet nothing will serve your turn but to know what power there was in the Sanhedrim to controle their Kings to which I answer that both Skickardus and Grotius with the full consent of the Talmudists have assured you that in case the King came to violate those Laws and Statutes it was in the power of the Sanhedrim to bring him unto corporal punishment Moreover it is shewn by the latter out of Josephus that Hircanus when he could not deliver Hierom from the Sanhedrim by power he did it by art Nor is your evasion so good as that of Hircanus while you having nothing to say to the contrary but that Herod when he was question'd was no King shuffle over the business without taking notice as to the point in controversie that Hircanus who could not save Herod from the question was King The manner of the restitution of the Sanhedrim made by Jehoshaphat plainly shewes that even under the Monarchy the power of the Sanhedrim was co-ordinate with that of the King at least such is the judgement of the Iewish Writers for saith Grotius the King as is rightly noted by the Talmudists was not to judge in some cases and to this the words of Zedekiah seem to relate whereto the Sanhedrim demanding the Prophet Jeremiah he said Behold he is in your hands for the King is not he that can do any thing without you nor except David had ever any King Session or vote in this Councell to which soon after he adds that this Court contiued till Herod the Great whose insolency when exalting it self more and more against the Law the Senator had not in time as they ought suppressed by their power God punished them in such a manner for the neglect of their duty that they came all to be put to death Herod except Sameae onely whose foresight and frequent warning of this or the like calamity they had as frequently contemned In which words Grotius following the unanimous consent of the Talmudists if they knew any thing of their own orders expresly attributes the same power unto the Sanhedrim and chargeth them with the same dury in Israel that is attributed unto the three Estates in a Gothick Moddel and charged upon these by Calvin Thus that there never lay any appeal from the Sanhedrim unto Moses except when the Jews were in captivity or under provincial Government to any other Magistrate as also that they had power upon their Kings being that your self say Iâ— the objection paramount and which not answered you confess that the three Estates convened in Parliament or any other papular Magistrate Calvin dreams of notwithstanding any discontinuance or non-usage on their parts or any prescription alledged by Kings to the contrary may resume and exercise that authority which God hath given them when ever they shall find a fit time for it And this letter shewing plainly that you have in no wise answered this objection it remains that your whole Book even according to your own acknowledgement is confuted by this letter Or if you be of another mind I shall hope to hear further from you 3. These are the very words of that you Letter to which an answer is required though to no part thereof but that which doth concern the Spartan Ephori and the Iewish Sanhedrim I can by any rules of disputation be required to answer the rest of your discourse touching the balancing or over-balancing of such degrees and ranks of men of which all Government consist is utterly Extrinsecally and extravagant unto my design which was not to dispute the severall forms of Government and in what the differences between them did most especially coâ—sist but onely to declare that neither the Spartan Ephori nor any such popular Magistrates as Calvin dreams of had any authority originally invested in them to controul their Kings much less to murder or depose them Howsoever I shall not purposely pass by any thing which by your self or any indifferent Reader shall be thought material without giving you my judgement and opinion in it Some things you say I writ as a Polititian a silly one I am God help me and some things as a Polititian and divine too And as a Polititian I am charged by you to have affirmed that the Spartan Kings were as absolute Monarchs as any in those times till Euripon the 3d. King of the Race of Hercules and the 2d King of the younger house to procure the favour and good will of the Rascal rabble loosened the raigns of Government and thereby much diminishing the Regall power This I affirm indeed and this you deny but you neither Answer my Authorities nor confute my Reasons my Authorities I derive from Plutarch first who speaking of the said Euripon whom he calleth Eurition affirms that till his time the Government of Sparta was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 sufficiently Monarchical if it were not more And secondly from Aristotle who calls the Government of Charilaus the sixt King of that House who as you say was generally affirmed to be a good man by the name of a tyranny And if it might be called a Tyranny then when the Regall power was under such a diminution by the folly of Euripon there is no question to be made but that the Spartan Kings were absolute Monarchs before any such diminution had been made To these two proofs you answer nothing nor say you any thing at all in confutation of the Reason by me brought to prove it Which is That having acquired the Estate by conquest and claiming by no other title then by that of Armies there was no question to be made but that they Governed in the way of absolute Monarchs it being not the guise of such as come in by conquest to covessant and capitulate with their Subjects but to impose their will for a Law upon them This being the custome of all Kings who
should be Judge touching the fitness or unfitness of such Laws and Liberties by which the people or the Nobility and the People are to be gratified by their Kings For if the Kings themselves must judge it it is not like that they will part with any of their just prerogatives which might make them less obeyed at home and lesser feared abroad but where invincible necessity or violent importunity might force them to it And then the Laws and Liberties which were so extorted were either violated or anulled whensoever the Granter was in power to weaken or make void the grant for malus diuturnitatis est custos metus as you know who said But if the people must be judges of such laws and liberties as were fittest for them there would be no end of their demands reasonable in their own nature and in number infinite For when they meet with a King of the giving hand they will press him so to give from one point to another till he give away Royalty it self and if they be not satisfied in all their askings they will be pleased with none of his former Grants 9. But you go on and having told us that in such cases as before the Government becomes tyrannical be the Prince otherwise never so good a man you prove it first by instancing in Carilaus King of Sparta in whose raign the Common-wealth was instituted by Licurgus who is generally affirmed to have been a good man and yet is said by Aristotle to have been a Tyrant and then conclude that it remaines with me to shew how a good man can otherwise be a Tyrant then by holding Monarchicall Government without a sufficient balance But certainly no such thing remains to be shown by me there being no occasion given you to require it of me in the Book against Calvin by which name you call it which your letter undertakes to answer The difference between us is whether the Ephory were ordained by the Kings of Sparta to curb the Senate or by the people to oppose and controul their Kings of which hitherto you have said nothing If you put an hundred questions on the by I am not bound by any rule of Disputation to make answer to them or so much as to any one of them as it comes in my way But in this point I shall not leave you without satisfaction In order whereunto you may do well to call to mind that the word Tyrant at the first was used to signifie a just and lawfull King qui postquam tecta Tyranni intravere sui as we find in Ovid though afterwards more frequently used to signifie such Princes onely who having supprest the popular Government in some Cities of Greece assumed the power unto themselves or otherwise rerestrained the people from running in to such disorder to which they had formerly been accustomed but at the last to signifie such merciless men who having unjustly gained the supream Authority by blood and violence continued in the same with the like cruelty and injustice Thus in the second sence and signification of the word we find mention of the Tyrants of Syracuse though some of them were just and moderate Princes as also of Nabis the Tyrant of Lacedemon of Alexander the Tyrant of Pherae And finally the 30. Magistrates which were sent from Sparta to govern the affairs of Athens which was before the most Popular and Democratical Government that ever was are best known by the name of the 30. Tyrants till this present time And in this second sence of the word the Government of Carilaus is by Aristotle said to be a Tyranny not because he supprest any popular Government which had before been setled in Lacedemon but because he restrained the people from having their own wills as before they had in the time of some of his predecessors or from living under such an Anarchy as they most desired And in this sence and signification of the word any good Prince may be called a Tyrant if he gratifie not his people or his Nobility and People with such Laws and Liberties as they conceived to be fittest for them or shall endeavour to retain so much of that soveraign power derived upon him by a long descent of Royal Ancestors by which he may be able to defend and protect his subjects But when you press me to this point that if I do not grant the former I must needs confess that not the favour of the Princes nor the usurpation of the People but the infirmity of the Monarchy caused the Commonwealth of Lacedemon I shall in part confess it and in part deny it For I shall willingly confess that the infirmity of the Monarchy might occasion the institution of the Commonwealth looking upon the Monarchy as it was broken and unsetled during the raign of Carilaus and yet shall absolutely deny that there was any such infirmity or insufficiency in the Monarchy till the reins of Government were let loose by the folly of Euripon 10 More then this is not said by Plutarch where he tells us that both Kings People agreed upon the calling home of Licurgus for remedying such disorders as were grown amongst them And less is not said by Plutarch then is said by me where I affirm that whatsoever the Kings lost the people got nothing by the alteration as being left out of all imployments in affairs of State and having thirty Masters instead of two which you pronounce to be a strange Affirmation because say you it was ordered by the Oracle that when the people were assembled The Senate should propose and dismiss the people without suffering them to debate and if they were not suffered to debate such businesses as were propounded by the Senate what other imployment could be left them in affairs of State praeter obsequii gloriam besides the Reputation of obedient Citizens But for this sore you have a plaister and tell us that if the people had had no right to debate they must therefore have had the right to resolve or elsewhere to be assembled for nothing It may be neither so nor so but that the common people of Sparta were called unto the publick assemblies as the Commons of England were antiently and originally summoned to the Court of Parliament that is to say Ad consentiendum faciendum to give consent and yield obedience to those Lawes and Ordinances which by the Great Council of the Peers and Prelates de communi consilio regni nostri as the Writ still runneth should be concluded and agreed on So that you might have spared the Oracle and Plutarchs Explication of it or the destant of Tyrteus upon the same unless you could conclude from any of them or from altogether that the people of Sparta were possessed of a negative voice and therewith of a power to frustrate the proceedings of the Kings and Senate which if they had the ultimate Result as you truly say and consequently the soveraign power in Government must
remain in them And then the Government of Sparta had been as meerly Popular and Democratical as of most other Cities in Greece but by no means to be accounted for an Aristocratie by which name Aristotle himselfe and most of our great Masters in the Schools of Politie do most commonly call it And therefore when Isocrates saith as here cited by you that the Lacedemonians flourish'd for this cause especially that their Government is Popular The word Popular is not to be understood in the stricter sence as differing the Government from that which they called an Aristocratie consisting of some part of the people though the wealthier better and more understanding men amongst them but as it did distinguish them from the Regall or Monarchical Government in which neither the whole body of the People nor any of the better wealthier and more sober men could pretend a share 11. And now at last you come to the institution of the Ephori affirmed by me and I had Plutarch for my Author to be ordained by Theopompus the 9th King of the second House with the consent of Polydorus his Colleague to curb the insolencies of the Senate in which you say that I make that to be a practise of the Kings against the Senate which by your Author is plain to have been a combination of the Kings and the Senate against the people If so my Author must contradict himself I am sure of that For positively he ascribes the institution of the Ephori to no other end but the controlling of the Senate nor unto any other person or persons then to Theopompus as out of my Book against Calvin you relate the story That which you tell us out of Plutarch in another place is told by Plutarch upon another occasion which was indeed a combination of the Kings and Senate against the people and a just one too For as your self relates the passage out of Plutarch the people upon the insolency and predominancy of the Kings and the Senate fell upon councel how to defend themselves and so assum'd the power of Debate and that hereupon the Kings Theopompus and Polydore would have added unto the tenour of the Oracle that if the people went about by debate to change the Propositions of the Senate it should be lawful for the Kings and the Senate to null the Result of the people This I acknowledg to be true But this makes nothing to the institution of the Ephori of which Plutarch speaks nothing in that place though he did soon after But whereas you subjoyn that the people incensed at the practise put a bit into the mouth of the Senate by the institution of the Ephori you make therein a grosser addition to the words of Plutarch then the two Kings and the Senate did to the words of the Oracle And then whereas you tell us out of Plato that the Ephorate was set up against the haereditary power of the Kings you either do mistake your Author or else must make him contradict himself as much in this place as you did Plutarch in the other Plato affirming in the place which you find cited in the Margin of the Book against Calvin so you please to call it that Lycurgus did not onely ordain the Senate but that he did also constitute the Ephorate for the strength and preservation of the Regal power But granting that it may be said by Plato in his 3 de legibus as you cite the place that the Ephorate was set up against the Hereditary power of Kings what reason have you to believe but that Plato might as well be mistaken in the end and purpose for which the Ephori were ordained as in the first Author of that institution which he makes to be Lycurgus himself contrary to Aristotle Plutarch and all other writers And finally whereas you tell us That Cicero agreeing in this point with Plato hath affirmed that the Ephori in Lacedemon were so opposite to the Kings as the Tribune in Rome to the Consuls You make therein an Argument against your self and I prove it thus As the Tribunes of Rome were first ordained to oppose the Consuls so were the Ephori of Sparta instituted to oppose the Kings but the Tribunes of Rome were not ordained at first to oppose the Kings but only to interpose in behalf of the people therefore the Ephori of Sparta were not instituted to oppose the Kings 12. The conference between Theopompus and his Queen touching his unadvisedness in ordaining these popular Officers and that which might ensue upon it you relate them no otherwise then I do but that you slight the womans foresight into business as not worth the noting indeed it had not been worth the noting if she had reproved that in the King which was the fact of the people only nor have you made any Answer to the other two Arguments by which I prove that the Ephori were instituted by the Kings and by none but them which might make a credulous man believe that they are unanswerable because unanswered And therefore being of such weight I shall add nothing to them to make them more weightier then they be but an explication of the second That second Argument I derive from the words of Cleomenes as they stand in Plutarch in which he lets the people know that one reason why the Ephori were instituted by the former Kings was that the Kings being ingaged in forreign wars might have some certain friends to sit in judgment in their stead whom they called Ephori And hereupon I may very well infer thus much That if the people had first instituted this Ephori as you say they did they would have chosen them out of such of their own number whom they might confide in and not have chosen them out of those who being the Kings especial friends must have a different interest from that of the people 13. Your discourse about the Ephori drawing towards an end you charge me with omitting as well the ruine of the Ballance as the corruption of the Common wealth which did thence arise and you charge it on me to this purpose That picking up my objections against the Government in vigor out of the rubbish and dissolution of it I may cast oust in mâ—ns eyes or perswade them that the Ephori trusting to the power or interest they had in the Commonalty came to usurp upon the Kings and to be Tyrants as thâ—y are called by Plato and Aristotle The first of which two charges is against all Reason for why should I be charged with omitting that which was extrinsecal unto my project and design it being no part of my intent to take notice of the several changes and corruptions in the State of Sparta but only of the institution of the Ephori their insolencies towards their King and their final ruine And the other of these charges is against all truth for how doth it appear or possibly can be made apparent that I have used
who in the ninth Book of his Odyssees gives this Aphorism viz Vxori natis jus dicit quisque virorum That every man gives law to his wife and children And though the children come to such a condition both of age and fortunes that they are well enough able to live of themselves yet do they still continue servants to their natural parents for Iuâ—a patris naturalis minime solvantur sath the civil Lawyers and therefore are required by God to do the duty of servants till either their Fathers free consent or the Constitution of the Government under which they live shall lease them from it Secondly Admitting this natural liberty of all mankind which our late Polititians so much dream of yet man in his depraved nature is such a violent head-strong and unruly beast that he stands as much in need of a â—it or bridle as the Horse or Mule least otherwise he run headlong to his own destruction And therefore if he will not have a King he must be under the command of some other Government aut Râ—x auâ— Senatus habendus est as once Pacuviusâ—aid â—aid unto those of Capua and whether he live under the command of a King or the power of a Senate he must be servant unto either though otherwise he pretend to the ability of a self-subsistence for unto whomsoever you give your selves servants to obey his servants ye are unto whom ye obey saith the Great Apostle And then the question will be this whither the natural liberty of mankind may be best preserved under a Monarchical Government where he hath but one Master to observe whose tempeâ— and affections he may without much difficulty comply withal under the Government of a Senate or popular State where he must serve some hundredâ— of Masters to every one of which or to the greater part of which it is impossible for the wisest man to give any contentment Supposing Thirdly That the Qâ—estion be resolved in favour of the Popular Government yet every popular Government is to be ordered by some Lawes and every Law is the restraining of the use of this pretended liberty and binds the subject to observance Lex being so called a Ligando say the old Grammarians in all such cases concerning which the Laws are made by what power sover 24. But then say you these laws are of their own making not imposed by others which makes no alteration in the case at all my fetters not being the easier to me because they are of my own making then if they were made by the next Smith or provided for me by some others Besides which you your self have told us that all such Kings as claim by Scripture can be but regulated Monarchs and could of right enact no Law but by the suffrage of the people pag. 15. Which is as notable a preservative of the peoples liberty as ever was enjoyed by them in a popular Government O but say you the people in a popular Government have a power to chuse the Senate which they have not in chusing of their King and that the people with such a Senate have power to make what Laws they please and what can follow thereupon but that a Government so setled in a Senate and people must be accounted for a Divine Institution and be called the Government of God because it is the Government of Laws and not of men as you tell us pag. 11. But first how may we be assured That a Senate so established will not Lord it over the people with greater insolency and put more heavy pressures on them then ever they suffered under Kings for being many in number and all equal in power every one of them will endeavour to enrich himself and serve their turn upon the people there being no superiour power to controul them for it And next how may we be assured That the people I mean the whole body of the people have any power to chuse their Senate or that the Senate being chosen they have a power in voting with them for the making of Laws The Famous Senate of the Romans was ordained by Romulus their first King their number doubled by Tarquinius Priscus and a third hundred added by Brutus which continued in the first times of the Consular Government the people having no hand at all in the nomination nor was it otherwise at Athens though that was the most popular and Democratical Estate that ever was in the World the main body of the people in each Citty having as little to do in the choise of the Senate as they had in making of their Laws And first in the making of their Laws none of the City of Athens were permitted to vote or to give their voices but such as were accounted and enrolled for Citizens and none were either so enrolled or reckoned but the Chief of the City all Servants Labourers Handicrafts-men and Artificers which make the far greater part in every City not passing in account for Citizens and consequently having no voice nor power either in making Laws or electing Magistrates And secondly as it was in the Democratie of Athens so was it in the Timocratie of Rome the infinitly greatest part of the Inhabiâ—anâ—s having no hand at all in the making of Laws or in any other Act of Government of what kind soever For if a Law were past in Senate none of inferiour Order had a suffrage in it If it were made in the general Assembly of the Centuries those of the Nobility agreeing together might pass a Law without the rest and whither they agreed or not the Law was always pâ—ssed by the other Centuries before it came to the sixt consisting of the poorer sort which were never called unto the vote They did in number far exceed all the other five Centuries And finally if the Law were made in the Assembly of the Tribes as all the poorer sort which made up the far greater part of the City could never make any use of their voices in the Assembly of Centuries so the Nobility which made up the most considerable part of the City were quite excluded from having any suffrage or voice at all in the Assembly of the Tribes Admitting finally that all the Inhabitants of Rome Athens Syracuse c. had vote in the Election of their Magistrates and in the making of their Laws yet what makes this unto those multitudes of people which live dispersed in the Territories of those mighty Cities or in any of the remoter Provinces which were subject to them who being infinitely more in number then the Inhabitants of those several and respective Cities unto which they were subject had neither voice in the Election of the Senate or in the making of their Laws or in any matter of concernment to their several Nations but will they nill they they must submit to the will and pleasure of their great Masters in those Cities under whom they served though otherwise as able to subsist of themselves as any of
the Government with him you should then turn the Text and say that God took of the Spirit which was upon the seventy Elders and put it upon Moses for otherwise his wisedom cannot be said to have been greater for having so many wise Assistants no more the personal vallour of a Prince may be said to be greater then it is by having many men of valour in his Council of War or the beauty of a Queen said to be greater then before by having many beautiful Ladies attending on her And so your argument against apealing from the Sanhedrim as the supream Court to Moses as the supream Prince is brought to nothing Which notwithstanding you conceive so highly of the Sanhedrim because it hath some resemblance to the Senate in a popular estate that you make it to be a State distinct from the rest of the people and all this to no other purpose but to multiply the number of estate in every Nation that Kings and such as have the power of Kings may not be ridden only with the bitt and bridle but a Martingal also For if the Congregation of the people in Law to be made had such power as was shown but whither it be shown in your Papers or any where else I am yet to seek and that in Law so made the ultimate appeal lay unto the Sanhedrim as you can never prove it did when there was any King in Israel you ask this Question Why are not here two Estates in this Common wealth each by Gods own Ordinancce and both plain in Scripture Which Argument or Question needs no other Answer but that a male suppositis ad non valet Argumentum ad â—ejus concessa as the Logicians use to tell us You must have plainer Texts of Scripture to prove this Ordinance of God which here you speak of or else the Sanhedrim and the people could not mak two distinct Estates in that Common-wealth as you say they did 30. Now for the clearer proofs of this that is to say that there lay no appeal to Moses from the seventy Elders you have recourse to those words in Deut. 17. 8. where it is said That if there arise a Controversie within thy gates too hard for thee in judgment then shalt thou come unto the Priest and to the Levite or to the Judge that shall be in those days and they shall shew thee the sentence of Judgment upon which Text you first deliver this gloss viz. that by the Judge which shall be in those days we are to understand those supream Judges which governed the affairs of Israel from time to time betwixt the death of Joshua and the raign of Saul Secondly That by the Priests and Levites we are to understand the Sanhedrim according to the sense of all Authors as they stand both Jewish and Christian And thirdlâ— by these words within thy Gates the Jethronian Judges because they sate and gave judgment in the Gates of their Cities And thereupon you raise this Conclusion without doubt or hesitancy That by the clear sence of Scripture all matter of appeal in Israel lay unto the Sanhedrim And yet perhaps it may be said that the sence of that Text of Scripture is not so clear as you would have it the words being otherwise glossed and therefore otherwise to be understood then you seem to do For First How may we be assured that the Priâ—sts and Levites made such a considerable number in the Sanhedrim as to be taken in this place for the woole Court Some which are skilled in all the learning of the Hebrews telling us that the 70. Elders were first chosen by six and six out of every Tribe which make up 72 in all And yet say they they passed by the name of the 70. Elders ad retundationem numeri for the evenness and roundness of the number even as the 72 Disciples Post haec autem designavit dominus aliâ—s Septuaginta duos saith the vular Latin Luk. 10. 1. are for the same reason called the seventy If so there could but six Priests and Levites be chosen into that great Council admitting that the Tribe of Levi were at that time reckoned to be one of the Twelve and therefore it is very improbable that the Priests and Levites should stand here for all the Sanhedrim but if the Tribe of Levi were not accounted at that time amongst the Twelve as they were not afterwards then could there be no Priests or Levites in that Court at all at the first institution of it though afterwards when Ten of the Twelve Tribes were fallen from the house of David the Priests and Levites might be taken in to make up the number And thereupon it needs must follow that Moses iâ— that place did not intend the whole Sanhedrim by the Priests and Levites or lookt upon the Priests and Levites as the greatest and most considerable thereof Secondly It is affirmed by some Christian Writers that the Priests and Levites here mentioned are to be understood in their single capacities and not as parts and members of the Iewish Sanhedrim for when a matter seemed too hard to be determined by the inferiour Judges they are enjoyned saith Deodat to go to the Priests by way of consultation and Enquiry to be informed of the true sence and meaning of Gods Laws The Priests being great Lawyers among the people understanding and experienced in the meaning of Gods Law according to which judgement was to be given in all the cases comprehended therein for which we cannot have a better proof then that of the Prophet Mal. cap. 2. 7. where it is said that the Priests lips should keep knowledge and they should seek the Law at his mouth for he is the Messenger of the Lord of Hosts Nor is it so certain as you make it that by the Judge who should be in those dayes we are to understand the supream Judge or Judges or any of them who governed the affairs of Israel as aforesaid For Ainsworth who had well studied the Iewish Rabbines understands these words of the Sanhedrim it self By the Judge saith he is understood the high Councel or Senate of Judges which were the Chiefs or Heads of the Fathers of Israel And this he doth not onely say of his own Authority but refers himself in generall to the Hebrew Records and more particularly to Rubbige Maimony in his tract of Rebels ca. 1. Sect. 4. By both it is agreed that this direction is not given to the parties themselves who had any suit or controversie depending in the low Courts but to the Judges of those Courts and to them alone for which I must confess I can see no reason in the Text or context 31. For if you look into the first words of that chapter we shal find it to be a general direction to the people of Israel by which they are commanded not to sacrifice to the Lord their God any bullock or sheepe wherein is blemish or any ill favouredness
c. which no man can conceive to relate onely to the Judges of the lower Courts Nor find I any variation in the rest that follows no nor in that which comes after neiher v. 14. where those directions do begin which concern the people and not the Priests or Judges onely in the Election of their King And therefore give me leave to think and laugh not at me I beseech you for my singularity that there is no other meaning in that Text but this i e. That if a doubt or scruple should arise amongst them in their severall dwellings in matters which concerned Religion and the right understanding of the law of God they should have recourse to the Priests and Levites for satisfaction in the same according unto that of the Prophet Malachy that the people were to seek the Law from the mouth of the Priest as before we had it But if it were a civil controversie matters of difference which they could not end amongst themselves and by the interposition of their friends and Neighbours they should refer it to the Judge or Judges in whose times they lived to be finally decided by him And for this Exposition I have not onely some authority but some reason also My Authority shall be taken from the words of Estius who makes gloss upon the Text viz. Haec sententia modo sacerdotem modo judicem nominat propter duplicem magistratum qui erat in populo dei sacram civilem quamvis contingeret aliquando duplicem magistratum in eandem personam concurrere My reasons shall be taken first from that passage in the 12. verse in which it is said that the man that will do presumptuously and will not hearken unto the Priest that standeth to Minister there before the Lord thy God c. Where the Priest seems to be considered in personal capacity as he stands ministring before the Lord at his holy Altar not as he sits upon the bench and acts â—with other of the Judges in an open Court But whether that be so or not certain I am that many inconveniences must needs happen amongst the people if the Text be no otherwise to be understood as you would have it It is confest on all hands that there was some intervall of time from the death of every one of the supream Judges and the advancing of the next though in Chronologies the years of the succeeding Judges are counted from the death of his Predecessor And you your selfe confess p. 14. that the Sanhedrim did not continue long after Josuah And I can find no restitution of it till the time of Iehoshaphat For though you tell us p. 16. that never any King except David had Session or Vote in this Councel by which you intimate that the Sanhedrim was on foot again in the time of David Yet you have shewed us neither reason nor authority for it And therefore you may do me a greater favour as your own words are then you suddenly imagine to tell me really in what Book of Scripture or in what other Author I may find it written that either the Sanhedrim was on foot again in the time of David or that David did at any time sit and vote amongst them Hereupon I conclude at last that if the Text be to be understood as you would have it and as you say it is understood in the sence of all Authors both Iewish and Christians then must the people be without remedy at the least without remedy of Appeal in their suits and controversies during the interval of time betwixt the Judges and without remedies also in their doubts scruples touching the meaning of the Law for the whole space of time which past betwixt the death of Iosuah and the raign of Iehoshaphat which comes to 511. years or there abouts which I desire you seriously to consider of 32. And yet the matter were the less if having given the Sanhedrim the Dernier Resort or the supream power in all appeals you did not ascribe to them an authority also to controul their Kings For proof whereof you tell us that both Skickardus and Grotius with the full consent of the Talmudists have assured you that if the King came to violate the Laws and the Statutes it was in the power of the Sanhedrim to bring him unto corporall punishment How far Skickardus hath assured you I am not able to say not being directed by you to any Book or Books of his where it may be found But if you find no more in Skickardus then you do in Grotius you will have little cause to brag of this discovery For Grotius in his first Book de jure belli c. cap. 3. and not cap. 1. as is mistaken in the print first telleth us thus viz. Samuel jus regum describens satis ostendit adversus Regis injurias nullam in populo relictam potestatem c. Samuel saith he describing the power of the King of Israel showes plainly that the people had no power to relieve themselves from the oppressions of their Kings according unto that of some antient Writers on those words of David Against thee onely have I sinned Psal 51. And to show how absolutely Kings were exempted from such punishments he presently subjoyns the testimony of Barnach monus an Hebrew In dictis Rabinorum titulo de judicibus which is this nulla creatura judicat regem sed benedictus that is to say that no creature judgeth or can judge the King but onely God for ever blessed According unto which I find a memorable Rule in Bracton an old English Lawyer relating to the Kings of England viz. Omnem esse sub rege ipsum sub nullo sed tantum sub deo That every man is under the King but the King is under none but God Betwixt which passages so plainly destructive of the power ascribed to the Sanhedrim Grotius interlopes this following passage from some Iewish Writers viz. Video consentire Hebraeos regi in eas leges quae de officio regis scriptae extabant peccanti inflicta verbera sedâ—a apud illos infamiâ carebant a rege in signum penitentiae sponte suscipiebantur ideoque non a lictore sed ab eo quem legisset ipse probatur suo arbitrio verberibus statuebat modum I have put down the words at large that the learned and judicious Reader may see what he is to trust to in this point The sence whereof is this in English viz. that stripes were inflicted on the King if he transgressed those Lawes which had been written touching the Regal office But that those stripes carried not with them any mark of infamy but were voluntary undergone by him in testimony of his repentance upon which ground the said stripes were not laid upon him by a common Officer but by some one or other of his own appointment it being also in his power to limit both the the number and severity of those stripes which they were to give him
Nothing in all this which concerns the Sanhedrim nothing which speaks of such a power as the bringing of the Kings unto corporal â—punishment this punishment being onely such as the Kings had condemned themselves unto in the way of penance for their transgression of the Laws This is enough to show how little credit is to be given to the full and general consent of the Talmudists whom Grotius builds upon for proving the supream power in the Sanhedrim in bringing their Kings to corporal punishment which they never had And yet to make the matter clearer he presently subjoyns these words unto those before but whether they be his own words or the words of some of his Hebrew Writers let them judge that list viz. a paenis autem coactivis adeo liberi erant reges ut etiam excalceationis lex quippe cum ignominia conjuncta in ipsis cessaret There Kings saith he were so far exempted from the coactive power of Law that they were not liable to the penance of going barefoot because it carried with it a mark of infamy If there be any other place in Grotius which may serve your turn you must first direct me where to find it before you can expect it should have an answer 33. The Talmudists having failed you you have recourse unto the Scripture and to the Authority of Josephus a right good Historian but with no more advantage to the point in hand then if you had never lookt upon them You tell us of a Restitution of the Sanhedrim was made by King Jehoshaphat as I think it was for so I find it 2 Chron. 19. v. 8. Moreover saith the Text in Jerusalem did Jehoshaphat set of the Levites and of the Priests and the chief of the Fathers in Israel for the judgement of the Lord and for controversies when they return to Jerusalem But how can you inferre from hence that by the manner of this Restitution admitting that it relates unto the Sanhedrim as I think â—it may though other Writers make it doubtful doth so plainly show that ever under the Monarchy the power of the Sanhedrim was co-ordinate with that of the King which consequent if it can be rationally collected from that text of Scripture or any which depends upon it I have lost my Logick Jehoshaphat though a just King and a godly man could neither be so unskilful in his own affairs or so careless of the regalities of his posterity as to erect another power which might be co-ordinate with his own and might hereafter give a check to himself and them in all Acts of Government But then supposing Jehoshaphat to be so improvident as to erect a power which was to be co-ordinate with him yet being but a co-ordinate power it gave them no Authority to bring their King to corporal punishment as you say they did I know it is a rule in Logick Co-ordinate se invicem supplent that one co-ordinate doth supply the defects of another But I never heard of any such Maxime as Co-ordinata se invicem tollent that one co-ordinate power may destroy the other and if it hath no power to destroy the other then can it pretend to no power correcting the other which is the next degree to a totall destruction For par in parem non habet potestatem as the saying is Besides all which if any such power had been given the Sanhedrim either at the first institution of it by Almighty God or at the Restitution by Jehoshaphat there is no question to be made but that we should have either found it in the Original Grant or by some exemplications of it in point of practise but finding neither of the two in the Book of God or in any approved humane Authors I take it for a very strong Argument that no such power was ever given them Non apparentium non existentium eandem esse rationem was a good maxime in the Schools and I build upon it 34 But on the contrary you hope to help your self by two examples one of them being taken out of the Prophet Jeremiah the other out of the Jewish Antiquities you instance first in Zedekias who to the Sanhedrim demanding the Prophet Jeremiah made answer Behold he is in your hands for the King is not he that can do any thing without you Out of which words you would infer First that the King according to the opinion of some of the Talmudists was not to judge in some cases which whether he was or not is not much material most Kings conceiving it most agreeable to their own ease the content of their Subjects to divolve that power upon their Judges obliged by oath to administer equal Justice betwixt the King and his people You infer secondly from those words that the Sanhedrim were co-ordinate with the Kings of Judah though there be no such matter in them My answer unto this objection and my reasons for it you must needs have met with in the Book against Calvin as you call it of which since you have took no notice I am forced to bring them here to a repetition My answer is That Calvin whom it most concerned to have it so finds fault with them who did expound the place to that end or purpose which you most desire or though the King did speak so honourably of his Princes ac si nihil iis sit negandum as if nothing was to be denied them whereas he rather doth conceive that it was amarulenta Regis quaerimonia a sad and bitter complaint of the poor captivated King against his Councellors by whom he was so over-ballanced ut velit nolit cedere iis cogeretur that he was forced to yield to them whether he would or not which he punctually and expresly calls inexcusabilem arrogantiam an intolerable piece of sawciness in those Princes and an exclusion of the King from his legal rights This makes the matter plain enough that the Princes by whom you understand the Sanhedrim had no such power in Calvins Judgment as might make them equal to the King or legally enable them to controul his rections but the reason which I there give makes the matter plainer and my reason is that Calvin who is said by some to have composed his Expositions on the Scripture according to the Doctrine of his institutions would not have lost so fair an evidence for the advancing of his popular Magistracy and consequently of the three Estates in most Christian Kingdomes had he conceived he could have made it serviceable to his end and purpose for then how easy had it been for it in stead of the Demarchy of Athens in which you say he was mistaken to have understood the Jewish Sanhedrim in which he could not be mistaken if you judge aright Besides we are not very sure that the Princes mentioned in that place did make up the Sanhedrim or came unto the King in the name of Councell of which some of them might be members but rather that
these passages these breathings of M. Burton in his Apologie and Appeal In which he calls on the Nobility To rouse up their spirits and magnanimous courage for the truth and to stick close to God and the King in helping the Lord and his anointed against the mighty upon the Judges to draw forth the sword of Justice to defend the Laws against such Innovators who as much as in them lieth divide between the King and People upon the Courtiers to put too their helping hands and prayers to rescue our religion and faithful Ministers then suspended from the jaws of those devouring Wolves and tyrannizing lordly Prelates c. Upon the people generally to take notice of the desperate practises innovations and Popish designs of these Antichristian Prelates and to oppose and redress them with all their force and power And yet as if this had not been enough to declare his meaning he breaths more plainly in his Libel called The News from Ipswich in which he lets us know That till his Majesty shall hang up some of these Romish Prelates Inquisitors before the Lord as the Gibbeonites once did the seven sons of Saul we can never hope to abate any of Gods plagues c. What think you of these breathings of Buchannan in his book De Jure Regni apud Scotos where he adviseth Regum interfectoribus proemia discerni c. that Rewards should publickly be decreed for those who kill a Tyrant and the meekest King that ever was shall be called a Tyrant if he oppose the setting up of the holy Discipline as usually are proposed to those who kill Wolves or Bears And finally what think you of these breathings in one of the brethren who preaching before the House of Commons in the beginning of the long Parliament required them in the name of the Lord to shew no mercie to the Prelatical party their wives and children but that they should proceed against them as against Babylon it self even to the taking of their children and dashing their brains against the stones Call you these holy breathings the holy breathings after Christ which you so applaud Or are they not such breathings rather aâ— the Scripture attributes to Saul before his conversion who in the ninth chapter of the Acts is said to be Spirator minarum caedis adversus discipules Domini that is to say that he breathed out threatnings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord. 27. As are their breathings such also is their meekness their humility their hatred of known sin their heavenly mindedness and that self-denial which you so commend for of their love to God I can take no notice As well as they are known unto you may you not be deceived in your opinion of them and take that first for a real and Christian meekness which is but counterfeit and pretended for their worldly ends Doth not our Saviour tell us of a sort of men false-preachers seducers and the like which should come in sheeps clothing but inwardly they are ravening wolves What means our Savior by sheeps clothing but that innocence meekness and humility which they should manifest and express in their outward actions it being the observation of Thomas Aquinas that grand dictator in the Schools In nomine â—vis innocentiam simplicitatem per totam Scripturam designarâ— And yet for all this fair appearance they were inwardly but ravening Wolves greedily thiâ—sting for the prey and hungry after spoil and rapine Astutam rapido gestanâ—es pectore vulpem in the Poets language This you may find exemplified in the Sect of the Anabaptists who at their first appearance disguised themselves in such an habit of meekness and humility and Christian patience as gained them great affection amongst the people but when they were grown unto a head and had got some power into their hands what lusts what slaughter what unmerciful cruelties did they not commit when Tyrannie and K. John of Leyden did so rage in Munster But because possible you may say that these are not the men whom your character aims at tell me what spirit of meeknesse you find in Calvin when he called Mary Q. of England by the name of Proserpine and tells us of her that she did superare omnes diabolos that all the Devils in hell were not half so mischievous or what in Beza when he could find no better title for Mary Q. of Scots then those of Athaliah and Medea the one as infamous in Scripture for her barbarous cruelty as the other is in heathen Writers or what of Peury Vdal and the rest of the Rabble of Mar Prelates in Queen Elizabeths time to whom there never was the like generation of railing Rabshakehs since the beginning of the world Or what of Dido Clariâ—s who calls King James for neither Kings nor Queens can escape them intentissimum Evangelii hostem the most bitter enemy of the Gospel and I say nothing of the scandalous reports and base reproaches which were laid upon his son and successor by the tongues and pens of too many others of that party 28. Look upon their humility and you shall find them exalting themselvs above Kings Princes and all that is called God the Pope and they contending for the supreme power in the Church of Christ For doth not Traverse say expresly in his Book of Discipline Huic Disciplinae omnes principes fasces suas submittere necesse est that Kings and Princes must submit their Scepters to the Rod of that Discipline which Calvin had devised and his followers here pursued so fiercely Have not some others of them declared elsewhere that Kings and Princes must lay down their Scepters at the Churches feet yea and lick up the dust thereof understanding always by the Church their one holy Discipline did they not carry themselves so proudly in the time of that Queen whom they compared to a sluttish housewife who swept the middle of the room but left the dust behinde the door and in every corner that being asked by a grave Counsellor of State whether the removal of some Ceremonies would not serve the turn they answered with insolence enough ne ungulam esse relinquendam that they would not leave so much as an hoof behind And that you may perceive they have been as good at it in Scotland as ever they have been in England Take here the testimony of King James who had very good experience of them in the Preface to his Basilicon Doron where telling us what he means by Puritans he describes them thus I give this stile saith he to such brain-sick and Headie Preachers as refusing to be called Anabaptists participate too much with their humours not only agreeing with the general rule of all Anabaptists in the contempt of the Civil Magistrate and in leaning to their own Dreams and Revelations but particularly in accounting all men prophane that swear not to all their phantasies in making for every particular question of the Policie of the
moderate the licentiousness of Kings such as were the Ephori set up of old against the Kings of Sparta The Tribunes of the people against the Roman Consuls and the Demarches against the Athenian State of which perhaps aâ— the world now goes they three estates are seized in each several Kingdom when solemnly assembled so far am I from hindering them to put restraints upon the exorbitant power of Kings as their office binds them that I conceive them rather to be guilty of perfidious dissimulation if they connive at Kings when they play the Tyrants or wantonly insult on the people in that so doing they betray the Liberty of the Subject of which they know themselves to be made Guardians by Gods own Ordinance What Calvin says of the Athenian Demarches they having been Magistrates of another nature is a mistake but such an one as destroys no other part of his assertion the rest of the Parenthesis or that which he saith of the Ephori and the Tribunes being confirmed as hath been already shown by Plato and Aristotle by Cicero and Plutarch Wherefore of the Ephori and the Tribunes enough Now why the Estates in a Gothick Moddel should be of less power no Politician in the world shall ever shew a reason the Estates are such by vertue of their Estate that is of their over-ballance in Dominion You are then either speculatively to shew how the over-ballance of Dominion should not amount unto Empire or practically that the over-ballance of Dominion hath not amounted unto Empire and that in a quiet Government or can it be no otherwise in a quiet Government then that the over-ballance of Dominion must amount unto Empire This principle being now sufficiently known is the cause it may be why you chuse in this place to speak rather like a Divine as you suppose then a Polititian for you would fain learn you say of Calvin in what part of the world we shall find any such Authority given to such popular Magistrates as he tells us of To which by the way I answer that God founded the Israelitish Government upon a popular ballance that we find the people of Israel judging the tribe of Benjamin and by the Oracle of God levying War against them which are acts of soveraign power therefore a popular ballance even by the Ordinance of God himself expressed in scripture amounted unto Empire But you when you have asked in what part of the word of God we shall find any such Authority given to popular Magistrates Answer Not in the Old Testament you are sure For when Moses first ordained the seventy Elders it was not to diminish any part of that power which was invested in him but to ease himselfe of some part of the burden lying upon him as you will have to appear plainly by the 18th of Exodus where Moses upon the advice of Jethro chose able men out of all Israel made them Rulers of thousands Rulers of Hundreds Rulers of fifties Rulers of tens Now I am sure that about this time the number of these men of Israel was above 6 hundred thousand and so any man may be sure that the Elders thus chosen should we count but the Rulers of the thousands only must have come at the least to six hundred wherefore you cannot be sure that this makes any thing to the election of the 70. Elders Well But out of these say you God afterwards in the 11th of Numb willed Moses to chuse the seventy Elders You may do me a greater favour then you can suddenly imagine to tell me really for what cause or upon what Authority your speech is so positive that God willed Moses to chuse the seventy Elders out of those that were chosen in the 18. of Exodus for whereas Moses is willed to chuse them out of such as he knew to be Elders such there were in Honour among the people though not in power before the Election of those advised by Jethro as appears Exod. 3. 16 and 4. 29. But had this been as you would have it what is the necessity that because there lay an appeal unto Moses from those in Exodus that is from the Jethronian Elders or Courts which sat afterwards in the Gates of the Temple and of every City therefore there must needs lye an appeal from the seventy Elders or the Sanhedrim unto Moses Especially while the whole stream of Jewish Writers or Talmudists who should have had some knowledg in their own Commonwealth unanimously affirm that there was no such thing whereupon to the Election of the former Elders saith Grotius In the place of these came the Judges in the Gates and in the place of Moses the Sanhedrim Nor need we go further then the Scripture for the certainty of the Assertion where the seventy are chosen not to stand under Moses but with him not to diminish his burthen or bear it under him with an appeal in difficult cases to him as is expressed in the Election of the Jethronian Elders but to bear the burden with him and without any mention of such appeal Moses before the Election of the Jethronian Judges had the whole burthen of Judicature lying upon him after their Election the burthen of the Appeals onely Wherefore if the seventy Elders were indeed instituted to bear the burthen with Moses there thenceforth lay noappeal unto Moses which is yet clearer in this precept If there arise a matter of Controversie within thy Gates which is plainly addrest unto the Jethronian Courts too hard for thee in Judgement then shalt thou come unto the Priest and the Levite by which in the sense of all Authors Jewish and Christian is understood the Sanhedrim or to the Judge that shall be in those days the Suffes or Dictator and they shall shew thee the sentence of Judgement whence by the clear sense of Scripture all matter of appeal in Israel lay unto the Sanhedrim Your next Argument that there must be nothing in all this but easing the supream Magistrate of some part of the burthen which was before two heavy for him without any diminution in the least respect of his power is that when God had taken of the spirit which was upon Moses and put it upon the seventy Elders the spirit yet rested upon Moses in as full a measure as it did at first I grant in a fuller for I believe his wisdom was the greater for this diminution of his power it being through the nature of the ballance apparently impossible that he could be any more then a Prince in a Commonwealth but your Argument can be of no force at all unless you will have him to have been less wise for not assuming soveraign power where without confusion it was altogether impossible he should have held it A Prince in a Commonwealth subsisteth by making himself or being made use of unto the free course of Popurall Orders but a soveraign Lord can have no other substance or security then by
claim by conquest it must belong to you to prove the contrary and tell me why the Spartan Kings should not observe the same rule in the Acts of Government as all others did Crowns which are purchased by the Sword seldome sit fast upon the head of the Conquerors if they deliver up that Sword by which they were purchased And therefore it was noted for a great error in Julius Cesar a man of greater parts and power then a King of Sparta to hope that he might hold that supream Authority by love of the people which he got by force of Arms and was so to hold it Against this you object First That the Spartan Kings could not be absolute because they had a Nobility Peâ—ple to gratifie But then you should have told us by what rule in Government the Spartan Kings who preceded Eurypon could be obliged to gratifie either the People or Nobility of that Country which they had conquered by the Sword And whereas you alledge in defence of Eurypon That his letting loose the Reines of Government to obtain favour with the people was a confession of the infirmity of the Monarchy and that his Action in so doing was not so voluntary in it self as unavoidable imprudence It was indeed a plain confession of the infirmity of the Monarch in not being able to hold the Kingdom in the same Estate in which it had been held by his Father and Grand father Of the infirmity of the Monarchy that is to say the form of Government by them established and to which the Spartans formerly had been accustomed I cannot think it to be any confession at all nor can I see how that imprudent Act of his can be affirmed to have been unavoidable in point of prudence by that which you produce from the words of Agis the five and twentieth King of Sparta of the younger house where he affirms that a King of Sparta could never come to be equal unto any other King but only by introducing equality among the people But first a King of Sparta might be as absolute in his own Dominions as any other King whatsoever of a larger Territory with whom he could not be thought equal in power and Riches The absoluteness or Autocraty of Kings if I may so call it depending not upon the greatness of their revenues or extent of Empire but only in their form of Government And secondly I would fain know how by the introducing an equality among the people could render a poor King of Sparta equal to any other King either of any greater power or larger Territory It was not possible for Agis aâ— he said himself in his address unto his Mother se alios reges pecunia aquare posse to equal other Kings in wealth and riches and therefore he resolved upon some exploit by which his name and reputation might grow great in the sight of the people and no exploit seemed in his eyes so probable to obtain that name and reputation which he aimed at then by introducing equality among the people which probably might make him a great King in the love and estimation of the common people for I must no longer call them the Rascal rabble though in no bodies else Nor could the low condition of the Kings of Sparta impose any such necessity upon Eurypon to change the Government as you say it did neither Eurypon nor any of his Successors encreasing either in power or riches by the alteration and finally whereas you seem to justifie this necessity by those words of Agis in which he told his Mother That a Servant or Lievtenant of Selinus or Ptolomey was worth more then ever were all the Kings of Sparta put together First Agis speaks not of any of the Lievtenants of those two Princes who possibly might amass more treasures then all the Kings of Sparta had done before but only of the Servants of those Leivtenants for it is Satraparum famuli servi Procuratorum in the translation of Xyland with which not having the Greek by me I content my self And secondly these words being spoken of the Servants of such Lievtenants and of the Servants of such great Persons which lived under either of those two Kings must needs have more of Rhetorique in them then of real truth For Agis did not only tell the people when he came to put this project in execution that he would devide amongst them his own Fields and Pastures of which he had very many in his own possession but that he would deliver up ten thousand Talents to be put into the common Treasury And if this one King were so rich in Lands and so stored with Money Dives agris dives positis in soenore nummis it must be very strange to think that a Servant of any of the Princes or Lievtenants of either of the said two Kings should be worth more then all the Kings of Sparta were they put together 4. But here before we can proceed I must clear my self from that Parenthesis of yours in which you say that I commonly call the people by the name of Rascal rabble as in another place you tell me that I have no better name for them then that but I hope you do not and I am sure you cannot gather out of any such words that I bestow that title on the people generally which either make up the main body of a Common wealth or comprehend all sorts of people which are not in the Rank and order of titular Nobility There is a great difference in the ellegancy and propriety of the Latine tongue between Plebs and Populus Populus signifying somtimes the agregative body of a State as Irasci populo Romano nemo sapienter potest in the words of Livie Somtimes all such of a State or Nation that are not in places of command as Senatus populusque Romanus in the vulgar stile of Republick But Plebs is of lower alloy relating unto none but those of inferiour quality as Laborers Handicrafts Artificers which commonly make up the greatest part of a State or Nation and yet pass under the account of the Rout or Rabble And such are they of whom Aristotle telleth us in his Books of Politiques That they are not only base or wicked Judges in their own Cases and that many of them differ little from Beasts You may do well to quarrel him for the one or not me for the other 5. In the next place you let us know That the Monarchy that is or can be absolute must be founded upon an Army planted by military Colonies upon the over balance of Land being in the Dominion of the Prince And so far I concur in opinion with you seeing it proved by late experience amongst our selves that no Prince can be an absolute Monarch without an Army that is to say without some standing Forces to be ready at command upon all occasions But then what reason have you to think that Aristodemus having conquered the Realm of Sparta
did not withal keep up his Army to secure the conquest and that this Army or some other was not kept on foot till the time of Euripon who being either of weaker parts or more apt to be wrought on or else unwilling to be at the continual charge of paying an Army might suppose it an high point of Husbandry to disband his Forces and cast himself entirely on the love of the people And secondly Admitting that of the two former Kings what reason can you give me why that Army should be planted in Colonies the territory of Sparta as you say your selfe being very narrow and consequently not much room nor any necessity at all for many such Colonies to be planted in it A standing Army answerable to the extent of the Country and the number of the old inhabitants disposed of in their Summer Camp and their Winter-Quarters would have done the work and done it with less charge and greater readiness then dispersed in Colonies And therefore when you say in such general terms That the Monarchy that is or can be absolute must be founded upon an Army planted by military Colonies upon the over balance of Land being in the Dominion of the Prince I must profess my self to differ in opinion from you For then how could a Prince possessed of his Kingdom from a long descent of Royal Ancestors and exercising absolute power upon his people be said to be an an absolute Monarch because his standing forces cannot be setled or disposed of in any such Colonies upon the over balance of Land within his Dominion In Countrys newly conquered or farre remote fom the chief residence of the Prince or the seat of the Empire such Colonies have been thought necessary in the former Ages the wisdome of the Romans not finding out any better or more present way to serve their Conquest But then such Colonies wanted not their inconveniencies and may in time produce the different Effect from that which was expected of them For being possessed of City and indowed with Lands and challenging a property in those Lands and Cities they came in tract of time by intermariages and alliances to be all one with the old Natives of the Country and stood as much upon their terms against the incroachments of those Princes under whom they served and by whose Ancestors they were planted A better Evidence whereof we can hardly find then in those English Colonies which were planted in Ireland at the first conquest of that Kingdom many of which by mutuall correspondency and alliances became so imbodied with the Irish that they degenerated at the last from the manner and civility of the English Nation and passing by the name of the English-Irish proved as rebellious if not more then the Irish themselves What therefore hath been found defective in Colonies in reference to the first intent of their plantation the wisdome and experience of these last ages have supplyed in Garisons Which consisting for the most part of single persons or otherwise living on their pay and suddenly removed from one place to another as the nature of the service leads them are never suffered to stay long enough in any one Town by which they may have opportunity to unite themselves with those of the Neighbourhood or Corporation in design and interess 6. But for a further proof of your position that is to say that there can be no absolute Monarch who hath a Nobility and People to gratifie you first instance in the Kings of France which I as well as others and others then as well as I do account for Absolute But it is known say you That in the whole world there is not a Nobility nor a People so frequently flying out or taking Arms against their Princes as the Nobility and People of France This I acknowledge to be true but affirm withall that the frequent flyings out of that Nobility and People against their Kings proceed not from any infirmity in the Monarchy but from the stirring and busie nature of the French in general who if they make not Wars abroad will find work at home so that we may affirm of them as the Historian doth of the Ancient Spaniaras Si foras hostem non habent domi quaerunt And this the wise Cardinal of Richelieu understood well enough when having dismantled Tachel reduced such Peers as remained in the hands of the Hugonets and crusht the Faction of the Monsieur now Duke of Orleans he presently engaged that King in a War with Spain that so the hot and fiery spirits of the French might be evaporated and consumed in a forrain War which otherwise had they stayed at home would ever and anon have inflamed the Kingdom For otherwise that the Kings of France were Absolute Monarchs there be many reasons to evince For first his arbitrary Edicts over-rule the Laws and dispose soveraignty of the chiefe concernments of the State which by the Parliament of Paris the supream Judicatory of that Kingdom and looked on as the chief supporter of the Rights and Liberties of the subject seldom or never are controled though disputed often And if the Observation be true which we find in Justine that in the Monarchies of the first ages Abitria principum pro legibus erant be of any truth or if the Maxime which we find in Justinians Institutes viz. Quod principi placuerit legis habet vigorem be any badge or cognisance of an absolute Monarch the Kings of France may as well portend to such an absoluteness as any of the Roman Emperours or preceding Monarchs ar tell est nostre plaisir with which formal words he concludeth all his Royal Edicts are as significant as that Maxime in Justinians Institutes or the said observation which we find in Justine Nor is his absolute power less visible in the raising of Moneys then in the passing of his Edicts it being in his power without asking the consent of his people in Parliament to levy such sums upon the subjects besides his Gabells Aides and accustomed Taxes as his Treasurers under-Treasurers or other Officers of his Revenue shall impose upon them From the patient bearing of which burthens the King of France is commonly called Rex Asinâ—rum or the King of Asses Nor doth he want such standing Forces as are sufficient to preserve his power and make good his actions it being conceived by some and affirmed by others that he is able to bring into the field for a sudden service no less then sixty Companies of Men of Arms twenty Cornets of light Horse and five Companies of Harque Bushiers on Horse-Back which amount to 10000 in the total together with 20 Ensigns of French Horse and 40 of Swisses and yet leave his Garisons well manned and his Forts and Frontiers well and sufficiently defended By all which laid together it is clear and manifest that the French Kings are absolute Monarchs and that their Government is as sufficiently Dispotical as a man could wish the frequent
any Article for casting dust into mens eyes the better to perswade them to give credit to any thing which may serve my turn when I have said nothing in all this business about the Ephori but what is justified by the Authority of the most famous States-men and renowned Writers who have committed to our knowledge the true condition of Affairs in that Common-wealth so that you might have spared the story of Hipitadeus the selling of his lot or his portion of Lands contrary to the Laws of Lycurgus the following of that bad example by other men and the reducing of all the Free-holders in that Common-wealth to the number of 100. only unless you had found any thing in that Book of mine which had sounded contrary unto it But whereas you infer in that which followeth That the ingrossing the Lands of that Common wealth into such few hands altered the Government into an Oligarchy that by this it was no Oligarchy that Agis was murthered and that in reference to this Oligarchy Plato and Aristotle called the Government of Sparta by the name of Tyranny in all these things you may be said to cast dust into the eyes of the Readers that they may not see the light of truth For certainly the Government of the State of Sparta consisting in the Kings and Senate remained only as it was before by the Laws of Lycurgus the superinduction of the Ephori being added to it not altered any thing at all by the ingrossing of the Lands of that Common-wealth into those few hands Nor was it by the Authority of those ingrossers whom you call the Oligarchy though possible enough at their instigation that Agis was murthered by the Ephori nor was it finally in relation to these Ingrossers that the Government of Sparta was called a tyranny there was no reason why it should both by Plato and Aristotle but only in reference to the unparaleld cruelties and abominable insolencies of the Ephori committed on and against their Kings it being said by Aristotle in as plain tearms as may be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that the Ephorate and not the Oligarchy of Ingrossers was an absolute Tyranny Thus have you fetcht Arguments against an Oligarchy in the State of Sparta which you find not in it And for the close of all you say That whereas Agis and Cleomenes by the restitution of the Lots of Licurgus were assertors of popular power they are insinuated by me to have been assertors of Monarchy But first the restitution of the Lots of Licurgus by the industry and endeavours of those two Kings improved not at all the power of the people who were still kept under as before but only reduced them unto that equality in respect of Riches which might secure them from being trampled on and insulted over by their fellow Commoners And secondly it appears by Plutarch that the designe of those two Kings in that restitution was to get glory to the one and preservation to the other which could not be effected but by gaining the good will of the common people and make them sure unto their side whensoever they should be ready for that great design of destroying the Ephori And so much in Answer to that part of your Letter which concerns the rise insolencies and destruction of those popular Villains which Calvin makes his first example for opposing Kings 14. Such being my play no foul play I am sure with humane Authors or as a Polititian you will next show me whither I have dealt better with the Scripture or been more carefull as a Divine But first you must look backwards upon somwhat which was said before And having laid down the words of Calvin which occasioned this discourse between us you cannot but confess that what he saith of Demarchy of Athens is a plain mistake they being officers as you truly say of another nature and then why he may not be as much mistaken in the Spartan Ephori and the Roman Tribunes as in the Athenian Demarchy you can show no reason For if he be of a fallible spirit in one point he can be infallible in none Which mistake notwithstanding it betrayes his ignorance in the Greek Antiquities you tell us not to be such an one as destroyes no other part of his Assertion First The supereminent Authority of the Ephori over the Kings of the Tribunes over their Consuls standing good however The contrary whereof to use your own words hath been already proved by Plato Aristotle and Plutarch though you would willingly perswade the Reader that they speak for you Which said you put me to it once again as a Polititian and tell me that no Polititian in the world can show a reâ—son Why the Estates in a Gothick Moddel should be of less power then either the Spartan Ephori or the Roman Tribunes So much I shall be willing to grant that the Estates in a Gothick Moddel have as much power in the publick Government and over the persons of their Kings as the Ephori had over their Kings and the Tribunes over their Consuls at their first institution But that they had the like power in either case as the Ephori and the Tribunes exercised by violence and usurpation in their severall Cities no Polititian in the world can be able to show me And this we may the better see by looking on their power in matters which concern the publique in the Realm of Spaine the Kings and people whereof those of Portugal excepted onely are of Gothick race and therefore likely to retain most of the Gothick Moddels And looking on it we shall find first that their Curias or General conventions consist there as in other places of the three Estates Prelate Peer and People And secondly that though the Government of that King be not so Arbitrary Despotical as it is in France yet he both rules and manageth those Conventions to his own contentment For neither can they meet together but by his appointment nor are their acts and consultations of any effect further then as they are confirmed by the Kings consent nor finally can they sit any longer or depart any sooner then as it may stand most with the Kings conveniency But Bodin goes a little further And having showed us with what Reverence and Devotion the the three Estates of France addressed themselves to Charles the 8th in a convention held at Tours at what time the Authority of the Assemblies was greater and more eminent then it hath been since affirms expresly Majorem etiam Obedientiam majus obsequium Hispanorum regi Exhiberi The King of Spain hath more obedience and observance from his three Estates then that which was afforded to the King of France The General conventions of both Kingdoms being much alike may seem to have been cast in the same mould for the French neighbouring the Goths who then possest those Provinces in the Realm of France which lie on the west side of the Loire could not
but know the manner of those Assemblies which Charles Martel thought good to introduce and settle in the Realm of France that giving them some influence in the publick Government and binding them unto him by so great a favour he might make use of their Authority to preserve his own as his Son Pepin after did to obtain the Crown But that the. Assembly of Estates in either Kingdom did take upon them to fine imprison or to depose or murder any of their Kings as the Tribunes sometimes did the Consuls and the Ephori did the Kings of Sparta you cannot easily prove out of all their stories 15. But you go on and tell me first that the estates in a Gothish Moddel are such by virtue of their estates that is of their over ballance in dominion and then you put it upon me to show both why the over ballance in dominion should not amount to Empire and practically that it amounteth not to Empire in quiet and well governed times But this by your leave is a strange way of Disputation by cutting out what â—work you please and sending it to me to make it up as well as I can But being sent to me I am bound to dispatch it out of hand for your satisfaction I say then first that the Estates in a Gothish Moddel are not such by virtue of their Estates that is to say by being above the rest of the people in titles of Honour and Revenue which you call an over ballance in Dominion For were it so they were of power to exercise the same Authority as you suppose the Tribunes and the Ephori to have done before them in all times alike and not when they are called together by the Kings command For being Masters of their Estates as well out of as in those Generall Assemblies and Conventions and consequently in all times alike what reason can you show me that they should make no use of that Power which belongs to them in right of their Estates but in those General Assemblies and Conventions onely Secondly If they have that power by virtue of their Estates and yet cannot exercise but in such Conventions how doth it come to pass that such Conventions are not of their own appointment but onely at the pleasure and command of their several Kings And Thirdly If they hold and enjoy that Power by virtue of their said Estates you may do well to show some reason why all that are above the rest of the people in Titles of Honour and Revenue should not be called to those assembly of Estates but onely some few out of every Order as in France and Spain to represent the rest of their several Orders For being equal or somewhat near to an equality with one another in Estates and Honours those which were pretermitted have the greater wrong in not being suffered to make use of that natural power which their over balance in dominion hath conferred upon them And then I would be glad to right whether this over ballance in Dominion be ascribed unto them in reference to the King or the common people If in relation to the King you put the King into no better condition then any one of his subjects by making him accomptable to so many Masters who may say to him whensoever they shall meet together Redde rationem villicationis tuae and tell him plainly That he must give up an account of his stewardship for he shall be no longer steward And then have Kings done very ill in raising so many of their subjects to so great a Power and calling them together to make use of that power which they may make use of if they please to his destruction And if they have this over-ballance of Dominion in reference onely to the common people above whom they are raised in Estates and Honours what then becomes of that natural liberty of Mankind that underived Majesty of the common people which our great Masters in the School of Politie have so much cryed up The people must needs take it as ill as the King to be deprived of their natural Liberty without giving their consent unto it or to be deposed from that Majesty which is inherent in themselves without deriving it from any but their first Creator But on the other side if the three Estates in a Gothick Moddel receive that power which they enjoy in those Conventions either from the hands of the King as the Lords Spiritual and Temporal which make up two of the three Estates did here in England or from the hands of the People as the 3d. Estate have done in all Kingdoms else which is the generall opinion and practise of all Nations too you must stand single by your self in telling me that they have that power by virtue of those Estates which they are possest of And this may also serve to show you that an over ballance in Dominion or the greatness of Estate which some subjects have above the rest amounteth not to such an Empire as may give them any power over Prince or people unless it can be showed as I think it cannot that the King doth not over ballance them in the point of Dominion as they do the rest of their fellow subjects or that the whole body of the people cannot as well pretend to Dominion over themselves as any of their fellow-subjects can pretend to have over them And then if this Dominion do amount to an Empire also we shall have three Empires in one Kingdom that is to say the King the three Estates and the Common people I must confess I have not weigh'd all Orders and degrees of men in so even a scale as to resolve which of them ballanceth counter-ballanceth or over-ballanceth the other which must be various and uncertain according to the Lawes of severall Countrys and the different constitutions of their several Governments And I conceive it altogether as impossible to make a new Garment for the Moon which may as well fit her in the full as in her wainings and increasings as to accommodate these Metaphisical speculations to the rules of Government which varying in all places must have different forms And having different forms must have different ballances according to the Lawes and constitutions of each several Country And yet I am not altogether so dimme sighted as not to see what these new Notions which otherwise indeed would prove new Nothings do most chiefly aim at the chief design of many of the late Discourses being apparently no other then to put the supream Government into the hands of the common people or at least into the hands of those whom they shall chuse for their Trustees and Representors which if it could be once effected the underived Majesty of the common people would not appear so visibly in any one person whatsoever as in those Trustees and Representors and then the King or supream Magistrate being thus out shined would seem no other then a Star of the lesser Magnitude which
though moving in an higher sphere should neither give the light nor impart such influences to the world as the two Great Luminaries such as you fancy the Estates in a Gothick Moddel in case he prove not rather a falling Star as perhaps he may But hoping you will pardon this irruption in me I proceed unto the second part of your Letter in which I am said to speak rather like a Divine then a Polititian And yet not like a Divine neither but like a Divine as I suppose and no more then so 17. But letting all things be as they may you tell me that I aske of Calvin in what part of the word of God we may finde any such Authority given to popular Magistrates as he tells us of And for an answer hereunto you prepare the way by laying down the constitution of the Government of the people of Israel which you affirm to have been founded on a popular ballance And were it so there is no question to be made but that a popular ballance even by the Ordinance of God himself in Scripture both did and may amount to Empire for who â—rt thou O man which disputest with God or callest in question any of the Divine Acts of that heavenly providence The Question will be onely this Whether the Government of the Israelites was founded in a popular ballance which you say it was and I think rather that it was not The reason why I think so I shall show anon and in the mean time I will look upon the Argument which you suppose it to be proved We find say you the people of Israel iudging the tribe of Benjamine and by the Oracle of God leavying War against them Which being an act of soveraign power declares that Government to be founded on a popular ballance But first it appears not by the text that all the people of Israel did sit as Judges on the tribe of Benjamine the judgement might be passed for what you can say to the contrary by the Elders onely that is to say the heads or chiefs of the several families of the tribes of Israel and nothing but the execution of the sentences by them committed to the people Secondly It appears not by the Text that the War was leavied against the Benjamites by any Oracle of God but the contrary rather For it is said that the children of Israel were gathered tother as one man at a place called Mizpeh that they resolved upon the War and concluded how to have it carried before they asked Councel of the Lord Judg. 20. 18. And when they asked councel of the Lord it was not whether they should proceed in the War or not that being a thing resolved before hand but which of the tribes should go up first to the battail again the children of Benjamin as in the Book of Judges Cap 20. 18. which probably might be the cause of their ill success in the first encounter as having engaged themselves in a bloody War against their brethren before they sought for councel at the Oracle of God as they should have done And therefore Thirdly this rather showes the people of Israel to be under no Government at all then to be governed by a Democratical or popular form and serves as a most excellent commentary on the last words of the book of Judges viz In those dayes there was no King in Israel every Man did that which was right in his own eyes Had it been under any one form of Government Popular or Democratical call it what you will every man durst not to have done that which is right in his own eyes though there had been at that time no King in Israel And as they were not under any popular Government by which they might have been restrained from doing what was right in their own eyes so you confess that they were not at that time under the Government of the Sanhedrim for speaking of that passage in the first of Judges where Judah said unto Simeon 〈◊〉 Brother come up with me into my lot that we may fight against the Canaanites and I likewise will go with thee into thy lot so Simeon went with him c. you thereupon infer that by this leaguing at their pleasure one with another it was plain the Sanhedrim their common Ligament was broken so that the Sanhedrim being broken the Kings not instituted nor any form of popular Government set up among them by common consent nothing remains but that they must be governed by the Heads or Chiefs of the several Families into which the Tribes were Generally divided in those times Had there been any such Councel or establisht body as that of the Generall Estates of the united Provinces or that of the Cantons and their Confederates amongst the Switzers they might have been said to have been under such a popular Government as those people are though every Tribe had a distinct Government of its own as those Provinces and Cantons have 18. And here I should proceed to the Examination of that part of your Letter which concerns the Sanhedrim as being the point of greatest difference between us in the present business But considering that you have spent so much of your Paper about the Original institution and authority of the Kings of Israel and consequently of all those who have enjoyed that power and dignity in their severall Countrys I shall first lay all together which you have deliver'd on that subject with my opinion in the same as it comes before me In order whereunto I am first to say that the Government of that people when they were in Aegypt was under the Heads or Chiefes of their several families who by a paternal right derived on them from their first Father Adam challenged and enjoy'd a Fatherly authority over all those who descended of them And unto these did Moses address himselfe when he was to communicate from the Lord that most joyful news of their deliverance out of Aegypt called by the name of Elders in the Book of Exodus 3. 16. 4. 29 not called so onely because they were in honour onely amongst the rest of the people as you seem to say but because they were above them also in this point of power The people else had had no remedy in any differences and debates which might rise amongst them but suing in the Courts of Aegypt which it was as unfit for them to do as it was amongst the Primitive Christians to go to Law with one another in Emergent differences and that before the unbelievers But this dispersed authority being united in the person of Moses as many lines united in one Center from a large circumference the whole Government of the people did remain in him till by the advice of Jethro they were divided and sub divided into several Companies Each of them having over him their appointed Rulers By Gods appointment afterwards a standing Court of 70. Elders which they called the Sanhedrim were chosen to
bear part of the publick Government but whether chosen out of the Jethronian Judges or not we shall see anon Moses being dead and Josuah who succeeded in the supream Authority being also gathered by his Fathers the authority of the Sanhedrim dying also with them as your self confesseth the Ordinary Government returned again to the heads of the several Families as before in Aegypt the extraordinary being vested in those several Judges whom God raised up from time to time to free them from the power of those cruel Enemies from whose Tyranny they were not able otherwise to have freed themselves And in this state they stood till the time of Samuel when being vexed by the Philistines with conâ—inual Wars the Ark of God was taken not long before and their condition no less miserable under the times of Samuel then it was at the worst they desire to have a King to fight their Battails and to go in and out before them like to other Nations And that their future King might settle on the surer foundation he had not only the approbation of the Lord 1 Sam. 8. 22. and the acclamations of the people chap 10. v. 24. but the Heads and Chiefâ— of the several Families devolved their whole power upon him the motion being made to Samuel by the Elders of the people aswell in their own names as in the names of all the rest of the Tribes as appears 1 Sam. 8. 4. 19. Before this time that is to say after the deaths of Moses and Joshua who were Kings in fact though not in title the Israelites had no King to Raign over them but the Lord himself from whom they first received their Laws from whose mouth they received direction in all cases of difficulty and from whose hands they received protection in all times of danger And when they had any visible Judge or supream Governour God did not only raign in their persons in regard of that immediate vocation which they had from him but also of the gifts of the Spirit and the co-operation of his Grace and Power In which respect the Government of the Israelites during that interval of time is called by many learned Writers by the name of Theocratie or the immediate Government of the Lord himself And this the Lord himself not obscurely intimates when he said to Samuel They have not rejected thee but they have rejected me ne regnem super eos that I should not raign over them I know the general stream of Writers do understand these words as words of dislike and indignation in that the people seemed to be weary of his Government in their desire of having a King like to other Nations but I conceive with all due reverence unto those who opine the contrary that God spake these words rather to comfort Samuel whom he found much displeased and troubled at the Proposition of the Elders as if a greater injury had been offered to himself then was done to the Prophet then out of any dislike which he had of the matter For if he had disliked the matter that is that they should have a King like other Nations he neither would have fore signified it as a blessing on the seed of Abraham Gen. 17. or as prerogative of Judah Gen. 49. nor have foretold the people that when they should desire a King they should set him to be King over them whom the Lord their God shall chuse Deut. 17. nor would he have commanded Samuel to give them a King as they desired nor have directed him particularly to that very man whom he had designed for the Kingdom But on the contrary say you we find it otherwise in the Prophet Hosea where the Lord said unto the people That he had given them a King in his anger that is as you affirm in Saul and that he took him away in his wrath that is say you in the Captivity Hos. 13. 11. And to this purpose you alledge another passage in the same Prophet ch 8. v. 4. where it is said They have set up Kings and not by me they have made Princes and I knew it not But for all this your explication of the one Text and your application of the other are alike erroneous The Prophet Hosea lived in the time of Jerohoam son of Joah King of Israel and directed the words of his Prophesy to the people chiefly as they were separated and abstracted from the Realm of Israel And first beginning with the last it appears plainly by the verse foregoing that the words by you cited are addressed particularly to the house of Israel and it had been hard dealing in the Prophet to charge the ten Tribes with setting up of Kings but not by him had it been so understood of Saul as you say it was when it was the fault if it were a fault of all the twelve and therefore saith S. Hierome Potest hoc quod dicit ipsi regnaverunt non c. Etiam de Jeroboham accâ—pi filio Nabath de ceteris principibus qui ei in imperio successerint More positively some learned Writers in the Church of Rome by whom it is affirmed Hunâ— locum pertinere ad Reges Israel quorum primus erat Jeroboham qui tempore Reaboham filii Salamonis Regnum decem Tribuum invasit And to the same effect saith Deodati amongst the Protestants viz. The people of their own proper motion without enquiring after Gods will or staying for his command or permission have chosen and made Kings of their own heads separating themselves from the lawful Rule of David ' s posterity 1 King 11. 31. And then the meaning of the other Text will be plainly this I gave thee or I gave thee leave to have a King in mine anger that is to say in Jeroboham the Son of Nebat who by with-drawing the people from the worship of God to worship the golden Calves of Dan and Bethel is said to have made Israel sin and thereby plagued them irremediously without repentance into the heavy anger and displeasure of the Lord their God And I took him away in my wrath that is to say in the person of Hosheah the last King of Israel carried away captive together with the greatest part of his people into the land of Assyria the people being dispersed in the several Provinces of that Empire never returning since that time to their native Country nor having any King of their own to raign over them as afore they had Not to say any thing of many of the Kings of Israel treacherously slain by their own subjects out of an ambitious desire to obtain the Kingdom of whom it may be justly said That God took them away in his wrath before they had lived out their full time in the course of nature Nothing in these two Texts which relates to Saul and the captivity that is to say the Captivity of Babylon as you understand it Such is your play with holy Scripture when you speak as you
suppose like a Divine 20. But you have another use to make of the Prophet Hosea whose words you cite unto a purpose that he never meant namely to prove that Kings are not of Divine Right For having said that such Divines who will alwaies have Kings to be of divine right are not to be hearkned too seeing they affirm that which is clean contrary to Scripture you add that in this case said Hosea they have set up Kings and not by me they have made Princes and I knew it not But first these words are not spoken by the Prophet touching the institution of Kings in General but onely of a particular fact in the ten Tribes of Israel by with drawing themselves from the house of David and setting up a King of their own without consulting with the Lord or craving his approbation and consent in the business Secondly If it may be said that Kings are not of Divine Right and institution because God saith here by the Prophet that some Kings have been set up but not by him you have more reason to affirm that Kings are of Divine Right and institution because he saith in another place less capable of any such misconstruction as you make of this by me Kings reign All Kings are said to reign by God because all reign by his appointment by his permission at the least And yet some Kings may be truly said not to reign by him either because they are set up by the people in a tumultuous and seditious way against the natural Kings and Princes or else because they come unto their Crowns by usurpation blood and violence contrary to his will revealed and the establisht Laws of their severall Countrys Which Argument if it should be good we could not have a stronger against such Papists as hold alwayes for it seems no mater if they did hold so but somtimes that the Pope by Divine right is head of the universall Church then by showing them out of their own Histories how many Popes have raised themselves into that See either by open faction or by secret bribery and by violent and unjust intrusion Of whom it may be said and that not improperly that though they pretend to be Christs Vicars and the successors of St. Peter yet were they never plac't by Christ in St. Peters Chair Now to dispute from the persons to the power and from the unjust wayes of acquiring that power to the original right and institution of it is such a sorry piece of Logick as you blaming those who dispute from the folly of a people against an Ordinance of God For upon what ground else do you lay the foundation of the legall Government especially amongst the Hebrews but on the folly of the people p. 11. the imprudence and importunity of the people p. 14. upon which ground also you build the supream authority of the Judges who onely by the meet folly of the people came to be set up in Israel p. 13. But certainly if their desires to have a King were folly and imprudence in them it must be felix fatuitas a very fortunate imprudence and a succesful folly I am sure of that that people never live in a settled condition till they come to the Government of Kings For was it not by the fortunate conduct of their Kings that they exterminated the rest of the Canaanites broke the Amalekites in pieces and crusht the power of the Phylistins growing by that means formidable unto all their Neigbours Was it not by the power and reputation of their Kings that they gained some strong Towns from the Children of Ammon and enlarged their Territories by the conquest of some parts of Syria that they grew strong in shipping and mannaged a wealthy trade from Esion-Geber in the streights of Babel-Mandel to the Land of Ophir in the remotest parts of India Prosperities sufficient to justifie and endear such burdens as by the alteration of the Government might be said upon them 21. From such Divines in Generall as will always I must keep that word have Kings to be by divine Right you come to me at last in my own particular charging me that at a venture I will have Kings to be of Divine Right and to be absolute whereas in truth say you if Divine Right be derived unto Kings from these of the Hebrews onely it is most apparent that no absolute King can be of Divine Right And first to answer for my self for having sometime been a Parson I shall take leave to Christen my own Child first I think that I was never so rash nor so ill advised as to speak any thing at aventure in so great a point as the originall institution and divine right of Kings Secondly I am sure I have not so little studied the Forms of Government as to affirm any where in that Book against Calvin as you call it that all Kings be absolute The second Sect. of the sixt Chapter of that Book being spent for the most part in shewing the differences between conditional Kings and an absolute Monarch And Thirdly They must be as sorry Divines and as bad Historians as my self who ascribe the absolute Power or the Divine right of Kings to the first institution of a King amongst the Hebrews For who knows not if he know any thing in that kind that there were Kings in Aegypt and Assyria as also of Scycionia in Peleponesus not long after the Flood Kings of the Aborigines and the Trojan race in Italy in that of Athens Argos and Micenae amongst the Greeks of the Parthians Syrians c. in the Greater and of Lydia in the lesser Asia long time before the Raign of Saul the first King of the Hebrews all which were absolute Monarchs in their several Countrys And as once Tully said Nulla gens tam barbara that never Nation was so barbarous but did acknowledge this principle that there was a God so will you hardly find any barbarous Nation who acknowledge not the supream Government of Kings And how then all Nations should agree in giving themselves over to the power and Government of Kings I believe none cannot show me a better reason then that they either did it by the light of natural reason by which they found that Government to be fittest for them or that the first Kings of every Nation were the heads families that retained that paternal right over all such as descended of them as might entitle their authority to divine institution For proof whereof since you have such a prejudice against Divines you need look no farther then your self who tells us p. 12. That Kings no question where the ballance is Monarchical are of Divine right and if they be good the greatest blessing that the Government so standing can be capable of or if you will not stand to this then look on the first Chapter of Aristotles Politicks where he makes the Regall Government to stand upon no other bottom then paternal Authority Initio
the common sort of people in those Common-wealths The like may be observed also in some Common-wealths of a later standing in which the greater part of the people have no voice at all as to the making of their Laws or chusing such as are to make them for the use of the publique and therefore are so far from having any part in the publique Government that for the most part they are Governed against their wills Such an imaginary speculation such an empty nothing is the supposed liberty of the people in a popular Government 25. We must next see notwithstanding all that hath been said how much you vilifie and contemn the Regal Government in respect of that popular which you chiefly drive at For having told us That the Government of the Senate and the people is that only which is or can be the Government of Laws and not of men and that the Government of the Laws and not of men is the Government of God and not of men You tell us out of Aristotles Politiques That he that is for the Governmens of Laws is for the Government of God and he that is for the Government of a man is for the Government of a Beast But Aristotle's words must be understood according to Aristotle's time Cum arbitria Principum pro legibus erant when the Subjects were Governed by no other Law then the will of the Prince and cannot be aplied to any King or Monarch in the Christian world which have not only the Law of God for a rule in Government but many positive Laws of their own establishing for the well ordering of the people in their several Kingdoms You tell us secondly That when the ballance is popular as in Israel in the Grecian in the Scicilian Tyrannies Kings are the direst curse that can befall a Nation But first to pretermit the extream harshness of the expression so far were Kings from being a curse to the people of Israel that admitting the former Government to have been setled on Popular Agrarian as it never was they proved the greatest temporal blessing to them as before was said that ever the Nation did enjoy And Secondly you fall from such Kings as exercise no other then a lawful power to the Grecian and Scicilian Tyrannies as if the case in setting up a King over the people of Israel not onely by Gods approbation but their own consent were to be paralelled with those Tyrannies which were erected in some Cities of Greece and Sicily by Dyâ—nisius and other Monsters of those ages infamous for their lusts and most barbarous cruelties For had the change been made by persons of sobriety moderation as that in Rome from a Democraty to a Monarchy by Augustus Caesar the alteration might have been for the benefit of the common people by bringing them from that which Aristotle calls the worst kind of Government to that which comes nearest to the Government of Almighty God and is therefore called the most Divine Nor had the people lost any thing by such change in the point of liberty which never is enjoyed more peacefully and securely nunquam libertas gratior extat quam sub Rege pio as it is in Claudian then under the Government of a just and merciful Prince witness the difference in the Government of the state of Florence between the tranquillity which all sorts of People do now enjoy under the protection of the Princes of the House of Mâ—dices and those confusions and disorders to which they were continually subject in the popular States In the Third place you tell us that a King or soveraign Prince can have no other subsistence or security then by cutting off or tearing up all roots that do naturally sheat or spring up into such branches that is to say to the free course of Popular Orders which may perhaps be true in some of the Scicilian and Gretian Tyrannies where every obstacle was removed which was conceived to stand in the Tyrants way yet cannot this possibly be made good in any Christian Kings and Princes in these parts of the World in which we find not any example of cutting off or tearing up such popular Orders or any roots which branch unto them as have been settled and confirmed in the times fore-going Nor are you satisfied with that distinction of the Rabbins whose Authority when it serveâ— your turn you do much insist on viz. that the people of Israel making a King displeased God not in the matter but the forms onely that is to say in desiring to have a King like other Nations which is no more then what generally is affirmed by such Christian Writers as have discoursed on this subject Take this of Peter Martyr among the rest who telleth us that the people 's sinned in this request by desiring of a King after the manner of all other Nations and not according to the rule of Gods word Deut. 17. and in that they desired a King without consulting with the Lord or having direction or order from him in that business All which may be and yet the ballance of a Government may not be onely form but matter the main matter of their request which is the root of the tree you speak of being to change the Government and to have a King the form of their Request or the formall words in which they made it being to have a King like other Nations 26. Finally you conceive so poorly of the Kings of the Hebrews and in them of all other Kings for ought I can see that they were but regulated Monarchs when they were at the best And in case of Mal-administration obnoxious unto corporall punishment from the hands of the Sanhedrim To prove the first you tell us they were so tyed up to the Rules of Government prescribed in Deut. 17. that they could neither multiply Horses nor Chariots nor Silver nor Gold nay could of right enact no law as in those by David but for the reduction of the Ark for the regulation of the Priests for the Election of Solomon which were made by the suffrage of the people To answer first unto the last David might gratifie the People in some popular actions as in the Reduction of the Ark and gratifie himself by the power of the people as in setling the succession in the person of Solomon and yet not be obliged to it by that place in Deut. or any other fundamental law which required it of him And so the first place is answered that the Kings of Israel were by that rule prohibited from multiplying Gold and Silver and Chariots and Horsemen in a greater measure then what was necessary for the support of their Estate and the protection of their people against forrain invasions And to this very well agrees the Gloss or Exposition of Diodati in which we find that the end thereof was that the King of Gods People should not exalt himself in pride and Tyranny nor put his confidence in humane means
or be corrupted with pleasures Which if it were not thus the rule of Government prescribed by God in Deut. 17. must bâ— directly contrary unto the manner of the King that is to say the customary practise of those Kings in the course of their Government which God himself describes 1 Sam. 8. 17. And yet this manner of the King being told by Samuel unto the People was so farre from terrifying them from having a King as they desired that they cryed out the more vehemently Nay but we will have a King over us c. And which is more Samuel having again informed ihem at the auguration of Saul touching the manner of their King it follows in the Text â—hat Samuel wrote it in a Book and laid it up before the Lord 1 Sam. 20. 25. Which to what purpose it was done unless it were to serve for a standing measure both of the Kings power and the peoples obedience it is hard to say And if you look upon the practise of David and his posterity we shall find how little they conceived themselves to be circumscribed within those limits which you have assigned them of which you cannot take a better survey then what is given you by the excellent but unfortunate Sir Walter Rawleigh in his conjecture of the causes hindring the reunion of Israel with Judah during the troubles of that Kingdom Hist of the World Part. 1. cap. 19. Sect. 6. Where having first told us that the dis-affection of the ten Tribes if we look upon humane reason was occasioned by desire of breaking that heavy yoak of bondage wherewith Solomon had galled their necks discourseth further of the hinderances of a re-union of the Kingdoms in this manner following Surely saith he whosoever shall take the paines to look into those examples which are extant of the differing courses held by the Kings of Israel and Judah in the administration of Justice will find it most probable that upon this ground iâ— was that the ten Tribes continued so averse from the line of David as to think all adversity more tolerable then the weighty Scepter of that House For the death of Joab and Shimei was indeed by them deserved yet in that they suffered it without form of judgement they suffered like unto men innocent The death of Adoniah was both without judgement and without any crime objected other then the Kings jealousie out of which by the same rule of Arbitrary justice under which it may be supposed that many were cast away he would have slain Jeroboham if he could have caught him before he had yet committed any offence as appears by his confident return out of Aegypt like one that was known to have endured wrong having not offered any That which comes after in that Author being a recapitulation onely of the like arbitrary proceedings of Jehoram and other of the following Kings I forbear to add marvelling onely by the way that the Sanhedrim did not take these Kings to task for violating the standing rules of their Government laid down as you affirm in Deut. 17. and lay some corporall punishment on them as you say they might 27. This leads me on to the institution of the Sanhedrim their power and period In the two first whereof you place the greatest part of your strength for defence of Calvin though possibly you may be mistaken in all three alike In the first Institution and authority of the Jethronian Judges there is no difference between us The first thing you accept against is that I make the 70. Elders to be chosen out of the Iethronians concerning which you tell me that I may do you a greater favour then I can suddenly imagine to tell you really for what cause or upon what Authority my speech is so positive that is to say that God willed Moses to chuse the seventy Elders out of those that were chosen in the 18th of Exodus If I can do you any favour in this or in any thing else I shall not be wanting in any thing which I can do for your satisfaction And therefore you may please to know that my speech is grounded on those words in Numbers 11. v. 1. viz. And the Lord said unto Moses Gather unto me seventy men of the Elders of Israel whom thou knowest to be Elders of the people and officers over them And bring them unto the Tabernacle of the Congregation that they may stand there with thee c. By which you may perceive that the 70. were not to be chosen out of the Elders onely but out of the Elders and Officers and other Officers at that time there were none to be found but those which were ordained by Moses in Exo. 18. to be Rulers of thousands Rulers of Hundreds Rulers of fifties and Rulers of â—ens for the determining of such smaller differences and suits in Law that might arise among the people And Secondly it is consonant with reason that it should be so that none should be admitted into the number of the 70. but such of whose integrity and abilities there had been some sufficient trial in the lower Courts Concerning which take here the Gloss of Deodati on the former words viz Elders viz. chosen out of the greater number of the other heads of the people Exo. 18. 25. that is to say Rulers of thousands Rulers of hundreds c. for to make up the great Councel or Senate Thou knowest viz. those thou hast thy self chosen into office or known and approved of in the exersising of it Would you have more for I am willing to do you any favour within my power then know that Ainsworth a man exceedingly well versed in all the learning of the Hebrews hath told me in his Notes or Comment on the former Text that by Officers in this place it seemeth to be meant of such Elders and Officers as were well known and had approved themselves for wisdome and good carriage for which they might with comfort be preferred to this high Senate For they that have Ministred well as the Apostle saith Purchased to themselves a good degree 1 Tim. 3. 13. And more particularly thus Our wise men have said that from the great Sanhedrim they sent into all the Land of Israel and made diligent enquiry whomsoever they found to be wise and afraid to sinne and meek c. They made him a Judge in his City And from thence they preferred him to the Gate of the Mountain of the House of the' Lord and from whence they promoted him to the Gate of the Court of the Sanctuary and from thence they advanced him to the great Judgement Hall for which he citeth Maimony one of the chief Rabbines in all that part in his Book of the Sanhedrim cap. 2. Sect. 8. which gives me very good assurance that the seventy were first chosen by Moses out of the Iethronian or Ruling Elders which were afterwards called Judges in the Gates because they were chosen out of that body in the times
succeeding 28 But granting this to be as you say I would have it you ask me what necessity there should bee in it that because there lay an appeal to Moses from those in Exodus that is from the Iethronian Judges therefore there must needs lie an appeal from the seventy Elders the Sanhedrim unto Moses also Which seems to me to be a contention de non Ente For neither doth the Scripture say in the 18th of Exodus that there lay any appeal from the Iethronian Judges to the 70. Elders nor do I say any where as I can remember that there lay any such appeal from the Sanhedrim or 70. Elders to Moses himself though I think that such appeals might be brought unto him All which the Scripture sayes concerning the Iethronian Judges is onely this That they shall bring every greater matter unto Moses but that they should judge in every small matter amongst themselves v. 22. which they are said to have done accordingly v. 26. But what makes this unto appeals Appeals are made onely by the party grieved not by the inferiour Courts themselves to the Courts above them and therefore when it was said that they should bring the greatest matters to Mâ—ses and keep the smaller to themselves it is to show the bounds and limits of their jurisdiction which they might not pass Just as the practise is in England in which the Sheriffs turn the Courts of the particular Hundreds determine not in any action above the value of 40 s. as here in Abingdon not above five pounds All greater causes of what weight or value soever they be being referred unto the Courts or Judges in Westminster Hall Nor say I any where that I can remember that there lay an appeal from the Sanhedrim unto Moses himselfe though I make no question but there did and you have said nothing to prove the contrary For what makes this unto the purpose that because ome of the Iewish Rabbines the learned Grotius out of them have told us that as in the place of the Jethronian Judges succeeded their Judges in the Gates so the Sanhedrim succeeded in the place of Moses therefore there lay no appeal to Moses from the Sanhedrim or 70. Elders For first this may be understood no otherwise then that they came into the place of Moses after his decease or rather after the death of Josuah who succeeded Moses till the first 70 were deceased And Secondly it may be understood that they succeeded in the place of Moses during that interval of time which past between the destruction of the Temple and the captivity of the People until the setling of the Government in the Race of the Maccabees that which happened from the Reign of Herod the Great to the finall rooting out of that Nation by the Emperour Aerian of which times most of your great Rabines seem to speak in which times neither any of the Kings of Iudah after their reftitution by Iehoshaphat or any of the Maccabeans were in place and power Moses had otherwise made himselfe of no significancy in the publick Government and stood but for a Cypher in the Arithmetick of State if he had not kept unto himself the Dernier Resort in receiving any just appeals from that higher Court as that both lawfully might and did from the Courts beneath them Which solecism in the Arts of Government had been committed by Jehoshaphat also if he had left the Sanhedrim an unlimitted power from which there could be no appeal either Agrarimine or Sententia to the Kings themselves 29. But then you say That we need not go further then Scripture for the certainty hereof where the seventy are chosen not to stand under Moses but with him not to diminish his burden or bear it under him with an appeal in difficult cases to him as is expressed in the Election of the Jethronian Elders but to bear it with him with out any mention of such appeal On which distinction between bearing the burden with him and under him you raise this conclusion That if the seventy Elders were indeed instituted to bear the burden with Moses therefore thenceforth lay no appeal unto him But this foundation is too weak for any Argument of weight to be built upon it there being no such difference betwixt the tearms but that by bearing the burden with him they might also bear it under him as indeed they did When Romulus ordained the Senate of Rome to be Assistants to him in the Government and to bear part of the burden with him did they not bear it also under him aswel as with him And when a King elects some principal persons to be of his Council and to bear some part of that great burden which is laid upon him do they not therefore bear their part of the burden as inferiour Ministers or Counsellors of Estate but as equals to him I believe not so I might enforce this matter further but that the Scripture is so evident and express against you You grant that the Jethronian Judges did bear their part of the burden under Moses and yet the Scripture says expresly Exod. 18. 22. that they did bear the burden with him and therefore it must follow also that though the Sanhedrim was said to stand with Moses and to bear part of the burden with him yet they did bear it under him also as the others did which notwithstanding you conclude That if the seventy Elders were indeed instituted to bear the burden with Moses there thenceforth lay no appeal unto Moses But then you hope to mend the matter by telling us that Moses gained in wisedom what he lost in power and so the change was for the better For whereas it was said by God to Moses in Num. 11. viz. And I will take of the spirit which is upon thee and I will put it upon them these words are so interpreted by all sorts of Expositors as not to tend unto the diminution of the power of Moses God's Spirit resting on him in as full a manner as before it did This you are pleased to grant and more for you say it rested in a fuller How so Because say you you do believe his wisedom was the greater for this diminution of his power Where first you take for granted that the power of Moses was diminshed by the institution of the seventy Elders which hitherto you have not proved and then believe that his wisedom was the greater for it which is as hard to prove as the other is For if the Spirit of God which before rested upon Moses was not diminished by any communication of it to the seventy Elders as the text doth not say it was you have no reason to believe that any such comunication of it to others to so many as seventy should make it rest upon him in a fuller measure then it did before or if you mean that his wisedom was the greater because he had so many able Assistants in
they were the Peers and most powerful men of the Realm of Judah out of whose Families the Kings did use to chuse their wives Who being incensed against the Prophet and knowing that the King was not able to dispute the point with them as the case then stood preferred the executing of their malice against the one before their duty to the other But granting that by Princes here we must mean the Sanhedrim and that the Sanhedrim taking the advantage of those broken and unsetled times carried some things with an high hand against that King yet this is no sufficient proof that either by the rules of their institution or their Restitution they were co-ordinate with their Kings or superiour to them Great Councils commonly are intent upon all advantages by which they may improve their power as in the minority of Kings or the unsetledness of the times or when they meet with such weak Princes who either for want of natural courage or a right understanding of their own affairs suffer them by little and little to get ground upon them But then I hope you will not argue a facto adjus that because they did it therefore they might lawfully do it that maxime of the Civil Lawyers id possumus quod jure possumus being as undeniably true in the case of the Sanhedrim or any other publick Council as in that of any private person 35. Your second example is that of Herod and Hircanus which you found also in the Book against Calvin by which name you call it but press it quite beyond my purpose Baronius had affirmed of the Sanhedrim as you also do Eorum summam esse potestatem qui de lege cognoscerent Prophetis simul de regibus judicarent that they had power of judicature over the Law the Prophets and the Kings themselves which false position he confirms by as false an instance affirming in the very next words horum judicio Herodem regem postulatum esse That Herod being then actually King of Jurie was convented by them for which he cites Josephus with the like integrity so that I had no other business with Baronius then to prove that Herod was not King when he was summoned to appear before the Sanhedrim and having proved that point I had done my business without any shufflings and Evasions as you put upon me But since Hircanus must be brought in also to act his part in a controversie of which I was not bound to take any notice I must let you know that if Hircanus could not by power save Herod from the hands of the Sanhedrim and therefore shifted him away as you say by art it was not for want of power in the King but for want of spirit in the man For first Hircanus at that time was no more King of the Jews then Herod was though he be sometimes called so by my self and others because he succeeded in the Kingdom and was actually in possession of it upon the death of Alexandra But having afterwards relinquished the Kingdom to Aristobulus and not restored again by Pompey when the differences betwixt them came to be decided he was forced to content himself with the Dignity and Title of High Priest and was no other at such time as this business hapned But granting that he was then King yet living in a broken and distracted time and being a Prince of little judgement and less courage every one had their ends upon him and made him yield to any thing which was offered to him So that this Argument comes into as little purpose as that before of Zedekias and therefore for a further answer to it I refer you thither without giving any more trouble to my self or you But when you add and add it out of Grotius that this Court continued till Herod the G. who caused them all to be put to death except Sameas only it must needs follow hereupon that Herod did not onely destroy the Members of that Court but the Court it selfe For when you say that this Court continued till Herod the Great you tell us in effect that it contiued no longer and by so doing you must either contradict the four Evangelists who make frequent mention of this Councel as Mat. 5. 22. Joh. 11. 47. c. or the general current of Interpreters which have written on them Nor am I much moved with that which you say from Grotius supposing that he hath the Talmudists or his Auâ—hors in it that is to say that God punished the Sanhedrim for neglect of their duty in not supressing by their power as they ought to have done â— he insolencies of Herod in exalting himself against the Laws For I believe that neither Grotius nor the Talmudists or any who depends upon them were of Gods councel in the business or can tell us any more of it then another man And therefore if the three Estates in a Gothish Moddel have no better legs to stand upon then the authority of the Talmudists and the power of the Sanhedrim they can pretend to no such power after the persons or actions of soveraign Princes as Calvin hath ascribed unto them 36. But you draw towards a conclusion and so do I you tell me upon confidence of your former Arguments and take it as a matter proved that there never lay an appeal from the Sanhedrim unto Moses nor to any other Magistrate excepting onely when they lived under the Provincial Government of some forrain Princes as also that they had power upon their Kings You tell me that I must confess that the three Estates concerned in Parliament or any other Popular Magistrate Calvin doth dream of are to be left in that condition in which Calvin finds them And so perhaps I may when I see this proved which as yet I do not though there be no necessity on my part to make such confession and much less to acknowledge that the whose book is answered by your endeavour to make answer to some passages in it Had it been proved unanswerably that the Ephori of Sparta by the first Rules of their institution had a jurisdiction over their Kings and the Sanhedrim also over theirs which are the only two points to which you have endeavoured to return an answer you have no more reason to expect that I should acknowledge the whole Book to be fully answered then that you or any man may be said to have confuted all the Works of Cardinal Bellarmine because he hath confuted two or three of his chief Objections And thus in order to your expectation of hearing further from me which you seem to hope for rather then out of any desires engaging my self either with fresh Adversaries or new disputes I must needs say that I look upon you as a generous and ingenious Adversary as before I did Of whose society and friendship I should count it no crime to be ambitious had not my great decay of â—ight beside other infirmities growing on me rendered me
zeal and ignorance A writing is subscribed on the 10th of May by Finch Lord Keeper Manchester Lord Privy Seal Littleton Chief Justice of the Common Pleas Banks Atturney General Witsield and Heath his Majesties Serjeants at the Law in which it was declared expresly that the Convocation being called by the Kings writ ought to continue till it was dissolved by the Kings Writ notwithstanding the dissolution of the Parliament But what makes this unto the purpose Our Author a more learned Lawyer then all these together hath resolved the contrary and throw it out as round as a boul that after the dissolution of the Parliament the Clarks of Diocesses and Cathedrals desisted from being publick persons and lost the notion of Representatives and thereby returned to their private condition The Animadvertor instanced in a convocation held in the time of Queen Eliz. An. 1585. which gave the Queen a Benevolence of two shillings in the pound to be raised on the Estates of all the Clergy by the meer censures of the Church without act of peachment Against which not able to object as to the truth and realty of it in matter of Fâ—ct he seems to make it questionable whecher it would hold good or not in point of Law if any turbulent Clergy-man had proved Recusant in payment and having slighted by the name of a blâ—ck â—wan a single instance of an unparliamented inpowred Convocation he imputes the whole success of that â—ash adventure rather unto the popularity of so Peerless a Princess the necessity of her occasions and the tranquillity of the times then to any efficacy or validity in the act it self And to what purpose all this pains but to expose the poor Clergy of the Convocation An. â—640 to the juster censure for following this unquestioned precedent in granting a more liberal benevolence to a gracious soveraign by no other authority then their own 34. If the â—ppealant still remain unsatisfied in this part of the Churches power I shall take a little more pâ—ins to instruct him in it though possibly I may tell him nothing which he knows not already being as learned in the Canons as in the common Law In which capacity I am sure he cannot chuse but know how ordinary a thing it was with Bishops to suspend their Clergy not onely ab officio but a Beneficio and not so onely but to sentence them if they saw just cause for it to a deprivation Which argues them to have a power over the property of the Clergy in their several Diocesses and such a power as had no ground to stand on but the authority of the Canons which conferred it on them And if our Author should object as perhaps he may that though the Canons in some cases do subject the Clergy not only to suspentions but deprivations of their cures and Benefices â—in which their property is concerned yet that it is not so in the case of the Laity whose Estates are not to be bound by so weak a thred I must then lead him to the Canons of 1603 for his satisfaction In which we find six Canons in a row one after another for providing the Book of Common Prayer the Book of Homilies the Bible of the largest Edition a Font for Baptism a fair Communion Table with a Carpet of Silk or other decent stuff to be laid upon it a Pulpit for Preaching of Gods Word a Chest to receive the alms for the Poor and finally for repairing of the Churches or Chappels whensoever they shall fall into any decay all these provisions and reparations to be made at the charges of the several and respective Parishes according to such rates as are indifferently assest upon them by the Church wardens Sides men and such other Parishioners as commonly convened together in the case which rates if any did refuse to make payment of they were compellable thereunto on a presentment made to the Ordinary by the said Church-wardens and other sworn Officers of the several and respective Parishes And yet those Canons never were confirmed by Act of Parliament as none of the like nature had been formerly in Queen Eliz time though of a continual and uncontroled practise upon all occasions The late Lord Primate in * a Letter more lately published by D. Barnard assures the honourable person unto whom he writ it that the making of any Articles or Canons at all to have ever been confirmed in that Kingdom by Act of Parliament is one of Dr. Heylyns Fancies And now it must be another of the Doctors Fancies to say that never any Articles or Canons had ever been confirmed by Act of Paliament in England though possible they may relate unto the binding of the subject in point of Poperty 35. But our Author hath a help at Maw and making use of his five fingers hath thrust a word into the proposition in debate between us which is not to be sound in the first drawing up of the issue The Question at the first was no more then this whether such Canons as were made by the Clergy in their Convocations and authorized by the King under the broad Seal of England could any further bind the subject then as they were confirmed by Act of Parliament And Secondly Whether such Canons could so bind either at such times as the Clergy acted their own Authority or after their admission to King Hen. the 8. in such things as concerned Temporals or temporal matters otherwise then as they were confirmed by national Customes that is to say as afterwards he expounds himselfe until they were consirmed by Act of Parliament Which points being so clearly stated by the Animadvertor in behalf of the Church that no honest evasion could be found to avoid his Argument the Appealant with his five fingers layes down life at the stake and then cryes out that the Animadvertor arrogates more power unto the Church then is due unto it either by the laws of God or man maintaining but he knows not where that Church men may go beyond Ecclesiastical Censures even to the limbs and lives of such as are Recusants to their Constitutions p. 2. so 53. And having taken up the scent he hunts it over all his Book with great noise and violence assuring us that such Canons were constantly checkt and controlled by the Laws of the Land in which the temporal Estate life and limbs of persons were concerned p. 2. fol. 27. As also that the King and Parliament though they directed not the proceedings of Ecclesiastical Courts in cases of Heresie which is more then his History would allow of yet did they order the power of Bishops over declared Hereticks without the direction of the Statute not to proceed to limb and life p. 2. fol. 45. And finally reduceth the whole Question to these two Propositions viz. 1. The proceedings of the Canon Law in what touched temporals of life limb and estate was alwayes limited with the secular Laws and national Customes of England And