Prudence and Courage among his People You see Sir the Freedom he takes with the King and his Ministers the next Point will be to enquire how he stands affected to the Government it self The Subjects says he pag. 3. retain their Proportion in the Legislature In which saying he makes them Partners of the Sovereignty and turns the Monarchy of England into a Tripartite and Coordinate Government which is as well Destructive of Parliaments on the one hand as of Royalty on the other Upon the Admittance of this Coordination any Two of the Three may destroy the Third the Two Houses may destroy the King and the King with Either of the Houses may destroy the Other Which if it be so what Prince that is Imperial in the Intervals would ever hazard the Dethroning of himself by a Session The making of Laws is a Peculiar and Incommunicable Priviledge of the Supreme Power and the Office of the Two Houses in this Case is only Consultive or Preparatory but the Character of Power rests in the Final Sanction which is in the King And Effectually the Passing of a Bill is but the granting of a Request The Two Houses make the Bill 't is true but the King makes the Law and 't is the Stamp not the Matter that makes it Current Nor does the Subject any otherwise make Laws than the Petitioner makes Orders of Council It is a Suspicious and Ill-looking Passage that he has Pag. 14. As to matter of Government says he If to murther the King be as certainly it is a Fact so horrid he does not say how horrid how much more Hainous is it to Assassinate the Kingdom Here is First involv'd in this Clause the Deposing Position of 41 that the King is Singulis major Universis minor For it is clear that the Comparison was only made to draw on the Preference and to possess the People that they have a greater Prize at Stake in the hazard of their Religion than in the Tye of their Civil Obedience the very Translation still of 41. And for their further Encouragement he tells them pag. 4. that We have the same Right modestly understood in our Propriety that the Prince hath in his Regality which carries with it an Innuendo that the King may as well Forfeit his Crown as the Subject his Free-hold It cannot be imagin'd that all these Leading and Desperate Hints should fall from a Man of Brains and sense by Chance and you see the whole Tract takes the same Biass No King of England says he pag. 58. had ever so great a Treasure of his peoples Affections except what those ill men have as they have done all the rest consum'd whom but out of an Excess of Love to his Person the Kingdom would never for it never did formerly so long have suffer'd Here 's still the Crocodile of 41 nothing but Love and Reverence to his late Majesty too till his Head was off But let us Reason the Matter in a word These Ill men have no Names it seems so that any Man that 's near the King is by this Libeller set up for a Mark to the Outrage of the People And then he says The Kingdom would never have suffer'd them Who are they I pray that he calls the Kingdom but the Rabble still of 41 the Execrable Instruments of That Rebellion and the Hopes of Another But if the Kingdom would not suffer it what would he have them do to help themselves The Law is open in Case of any Legal Impeachment and 't is too Early Days yet for a Tumult In his Descant upon the Test he is wonderfully free of his Figures Never says he pag 59 was so much sence contain'd in so few words no Conveyancer could ever in more Compendious or Binding Terms have drawn a Dissetlement of the whole Birth-right of England This Test has made a great Noise and it will be worth the while to examine what is said against it The Form of it is as follows I A B. do declare that it is not lawful upon any Pretence whatsoever to take up Arms against the King and that I do abhor that Trayterous Position of taking Arms by his Authority against his Person or against those that are Commission'd by him in Pursuance of such Commission And I do swear that I will not at any time Endeavour the Alteration of the Government either in Church or State So help me God He says pag 57. That it was thrown out of the House in the Plague-year at Oxford for fear of a general Infection of the Vitals of this Kingdom whereas in truth it was brought into the House as an Antidote against that Poyson which had seiz'd the Vitals of this Kingdom already and amounts to no more than the Unswearing of That on the Behalf of the Government which had been formerly sworn for the Destruction of it The Author of A Letter from a Person of Quality c. calls it p. 1. A STATE-MASTER-PIECE and design'd to these Ends. First To make a Distinct Party from the rest of the Nation of the High Episcopal Man and the Old Cavalier Now I took it rather to be a Design of Uniting All Parties under one Common Bond of Duty and Obedience to the Government And where That could not be obtain'd to distinguish who were for the Government and who against it for the Late King was murther'd upon this very Distinction betwixt his Authority and his Person Nor is there any Government upon the Face of the Earth without some Obligation upon the Subject Equivalent to this Test. Next says he they design to have the Government of the Church sworn to as Unalterable and so Tacitely own'd to be of Divine Right This under favour is a Fallacy The Test does not concern it self whether the Government be Changeable or not but only provides that the State may be serv'd with Magistrates and Officers that stand well Affected to the Establishment Those that do so will never scruple the Oath and for those that do not it is the very Intent of it to discriminate and to exclude them And to encounter the Covenant by Virtue of which they dissolv'd the Late Government with an Oath never to endeavour any further Alteration in This. And certainly a Man may better swear the Maintaining of a Government According to the Law than the Alteration of it Against Law Thirdly says the Author of the Letter In Requital to the Crown they declare the Government Absolute and Arbitrary and allow Monarchy as well as Episcopacy to be Jure Divino and not to be bounded or limited by Humane Laws How This Test does either Declare or Pretend the Government to be Absolute and Arbitrary I cannot imagine But on the Contrary every Man is ty'd by it from Endeavouring to make it so if it be not so already in Swearing that he will not at any time endeavour the Alteration of it And then in his Explication of the meaning of Church and State in
the Test by Monarchy and Episcopacy in his Reflection upon it he has done us a greater Kindness than he was aware of for he has wholly Disappointed the Spight and the Intent of his next Clause And as he goes on to secure all this they resolve to take away the Power and Oppertunity of Parliaments to alter any thing in Church or State only leave them as an Instrument to raise Mony and to pass such Laws as the Court and Church shall have a mind to The Attempt of any other how Necessary soever must be no less a Crime than Perjury See now whether or no this be fair dealing It is by his own Confession the Form of Monarchy and the Order of Episcopacy the Government it self and not the Administration of it that is here in Question He would have it believ'd That by this Test Parliaments are barr'd upon Pain of Perjury from Attempting any Alteration IN Church or State whereas they are left at Liberty to debate what Alterations they please in the Parts of the Government provided they do not strike at the Root of the Government it self And the Deliberation and Result of the whole Matter is no more than This. Many of the People and all the Principles are yet Living that destroy'd the King and the Bishops in the last Rebellion Let us have a Care of the same Hands again and trust none of them in the Government but under an Oath not to endeavour the Alteration of it That is to say of the Monarchy into a Republique or of Episcopacy into Presbytery as they did before And this was the Clear Scope of the Test. The Author of the Growth of Popery discoursing upon this Subject There is nothing says he p. 57. more Portentous and of worse Omen than when such an Oath hangs over a Nation like a New Comet foreboding the Alteration of Religion or Government A word first to the Oath which for want of an Epithete to express the hainousness of it the Libeller so Emphatically calls SUCH an Oath It is an Oath founded upon the same Consideration with the Oath of Allegience and directed to the same End and every jot as Necessary under This King as That was under his Grand-Father The Iesuited Papists had invited the Spaniard to Invade England The Iesuited Protestants in the late Rebellion did in like manner apply themselves to the French The Former laid a Plot for the Blowing up of the Parliament The Other executed the Plot of Destroying Parliaments Changing the Government and murthering the King The People were misted in the One Case upon the Iesuitical Principle that a Prince being Excommunicate by the Pope the Subject is discharg'd of his Duty to him and they were seduc'd in the Other by a Persuasion that the Sacred Character of a King rests in the Authority and is separable from the Person which Authority they lodg'd in the Two Houses and so did their Business This Practice of the Iesuits occasion'd the Oath of Allegience in the Statute 30 Iacobi intitled An Act for the Discovering and Repressing of Popish Recusants In which Oath you have this Clause And I do further swear that I do from my Heart detest and abjure as Impious and Heretical this damnable Doctrine and Position That Princes which be Excommunicated or Deprived by the Pope may be Deposed or Murther'd by their Subjects or any other whatsoever Here was an Act for the Discovering and Repressing of Popish Recusants with an Oath under a Penalty and a Declaration against and an Abhorrence of that Impious Position whereupon the Treasons of those Times were founded And why not a Provision as well against those People that with premeditated Malice as well as Ambition over-turn'd the Late Government and against That Principle of Dividing his Majesties Authority from his Person which was the Countenance and Support of the late Rebellion Take it in short and the Test is but a Supplement to the Oath of Allegiance The Scottish Faction Impos'd upon the People that they might be true to the King though they Levy'd Arms against his Person and the end of this Oath is only to expound That Position to be Treasonous and to Secure the Government for the Future against Men of such Principles According to Equity and Conscience and to the Common Practice and according to the Prudence of all well Order'd States Is this the Oath now that he calls SUCH an Oath The Oath than which there is nothing more Portentous and of worse Omen to a Nation He has forgotten the Fore-boding and Portentous Omens of Forty One and the Dire Events of those Presages What do you think of a deliberate Design to spoil the Crown the Church and the Subject And all this in the Name of God for the Honour of the King and the Good of the People And then the Entitling of Providence to all the Advantages that the Faction got by the Ruine of Three Kingdoms Here 's the unrepented Guilt of Sacriledge Treason and Bloud to the Highest Degree and so Transcendent an Ingratitude that some of the very Men that were Pardon'd for One Rebellion are now the Advocates for Another If these Practises should be suffer'd there would be no need to consult the Stars for a Prognostick of Change of Government The Oaths says he pag. 58. in our Late King's time taught the Phanaticks because they could not swear yet to Covenant His Memory fails him I perceive for the Covenant was a Foot in Scotland before any Oaths complain'd of here by the Token that the Assembly at Glasgow in 1638 came to this Resolution upon the Point It is lawful for Subjects to Covenant and Combine without the King and enter into a Bond of mutual Defence against him Take notice next that the Oath commplain'd of was the Oath ex Officio which Oath was Abolish'd before any Covenanting in England And he is so much out again in saying that the Phanaticks Covenanted c. because they could not swear that in Truth they Covenanted because they car'd not what they swore Witness their Covenants Negative Oaths and Oath of Abjuration in Opposition to their Oaths of Allegiance and Canonical Obedience There was no Compounding no Living in their Quarters without Swearing There was an Oath given at a Communion at Fife obliging People not to take the King's Covenant And it was one Condition upon the Treaty at the Isle of Wight that his Majesty himself should give Assurance by Solemn Oath under his Hand and Seal for settling Religion according to the Covenant So that they made no Conscience you see either of Swearing or Forfwearing either of taking Oaths Themselves or of Forcing them upon Others for the Advancement of their Design He takes exception pag. 59. to the Two Declaratory Points of the Test. First That it is not lawful upon any Pretence whatsoever to take up Arms against the King And he reasons the Matter in these Words It were difficult to instance a Law either
in This or Other Country but that a Private Man if any King in Christendom Assault him may having Retreated to the Wall stand upon his Guard That is to say A Private Man may kill his Prince in his own Defence For he puts this Case in Opposition to the Declaration Only translating the Taking up of Arms against the King into a Man's Standing upon his Guard All that 's Honest in 't is This That he refuses to declare That to be Unlawful which he holds to be Lawful His second Scruple is The Abhorrence of that Traiterous Position of taking Arms by his Authority against his Person or against those that are Commissioned by him in pursuance of such Commission Here says he is â—either Tenour or Rule of any such Commission specify'd nor the Qualification of those which shall be Armed with such Commissions expressed or Limited The Author of this Frivolous Shift knows very well that the Rules and Measures of Commissions vary according to the Circumstances of Time Place Fact Person that the Qualification of the Commissioner does not at all operate upon the Authority of the Commission and that if the Bill were drawn out to the length of the Book of Martyrs there would not yet be room enough to obviate all Cavils and Objections But in the next Page he speaks his Mind a little plainer As to the Commission says he if it be to take away a Man's Estate or his Life by Force yet it is the King's Commission Or if the Person Commissionated be under never so many Disabilities by Acts of Parliament yet his taking this Oath reâ—oves all those Incapacities or his Commission makes it not disputable This Seditious Hint for I cannot call it an Argument lyes open so many ways that I am only at a Loss where to begin with it First Let the Commission and Commissioner be what they will no Man is to be Iudg in his own Cause but the Law must be the Iudg both of the Legality of the One and the Capacity of the Other Secondly If upon this Ground an injur'd Person may take Arms in One Case so may a Criminal upâ—n the bare Pretence of it in any Other For 't is but saying that the Commission is Unwarrantable or that the Officer is a Rascal and there 's his Justification Thirdly Suppose a Double Abuse in Manner as â—s here suggested That Abuse does not yet void the Authority to which the Law on the One side requires Obedience or at least Submission and there is no Law on the Other side that allows Resistance Fourthly The End and Prospect of all Laws is Publick Convenience and there was never any Law invented so Profitable to a Community but it was in some Respect or other to the Detriment of some Particulars So that the very Admittance of his Suppositions does not at all affect the Reason of the Test if the Benefit be General on the One hand and the Mischief only Particular on the Other How many Men are sworn out of their Lives and Fortunes by False-Witnesses Shall we therefore quarrel the Method of Proceeding Secundum Allegata Probata A Man is Arrested upon a Fobb'd Action for a sum of Mony knowing First that he ows not a Penny Secondly that the Consequence of it will be his Ruine Thirdly that the Action is meerly Malicious And Fourthly to make it strong enough that the Officer that serves the Writ is Consederate with his Adversary and that they have Both complotted his Destruction All this will not yet Authorize a Resistance but if an Officer that has the King's Writ or any other Lawful Warrant though Erroneous shall be slain in the Execution of it This is MURTHER A word now as to the Occasion of it The People of 41 when they had forced his Majesty from his Palace by Affronts and Arm'd Tumults Publish'd this Doctrine to the Nation that though his Person was gone his Authority resided in the Two Houses under which Colour they imposed Ordinances upon the People for Laws and by Degrees proceeded to an Exercise of all the Acts of Sovereignty making War against the Person of the King and those that were Commission'd by him under the Pretence afore said as Rebellious Traytours and Conspirators Now to prevent the same Mischief again from the same Principles it was thought fit to propose this Declaration of Abhorrence The Objections against it are That the King may grant a Commission to take away a Mans Life or Estate and Employ any Man at a venture to execute it which is First The Supposal of an Unjust and Tyrannical Commission Secondly A Case so Rare that it would be a hard matter to produce a President for it without a Reference to a Tryal at Law And Thirdly What would be the Fruit of such a Resistance but the turning of an Oppression on the One side into a Rebellion on the other and the Forfeiting of that Life and Estate To the Law which was otherwise invaded Contrary to the Law For 't is a Thousand to one that the Power that Issu'd the Commission will find Assistants to Execute it So that the Resistance pleaded for in this Case is First of a very remote Supposition Secondly of dangerous Consequence to the Resistent And Thirdly of no Avail to him at all If we may not Resist says the Faction under these Circumstances our Lives Liberties and Estates are at the King's Mercy for that which may be one Mans Case may be any Mans And so because of This Possibility of Wrong to Particulars we judg it Reasonable that every Particular Man should be Allowed to Defend himself See now the Inconvenience which upon the Allowance of this Liberty in Favour of Particulars will redound to the Publick An Honest Man is charg'd with Treason in the King's Name and by his Majesties Order to be taken into Custody and by an Officer too under what Disabilities you please Here 's the whole Case An Innocent Person Life Liberty and Estate at stake and an Unqualifi'd Commissioner If One Man may Resist because he is Innocent Another upon the same Pretence may Resist too although he be Guilty For no Man under a Charge is either Guilty or Innocent in the Eye of the Law till he be Legally either Convicted or Acquitted So that the Innocent and the Guilty are to be try'd indifferently by the same Law and so are the Pretended Errours either in the Commission or Commissioner Take matters once out of the Channel of Tryal by our Peers There 's an end of Magna Charta and the Government it self is become Passive and Precarious Will you have the true Reason now why this Abhorrence goes so much against the hair with some People The Position is to be Cherish'd and kept in Countenance till the time comes for putting it in Practice No Man can be so blind as not to discern by the correspondent Motions of the Consistorians in Scotland and the Scottish English that they Act already by Concert and it is as plain by this Bold and Adventurous way of Libels all on the soddain that they depend upon France for a Second Which is no more than was done in the Late Rebellion by the fame Faction as appear'd by a Letter of the Lord Lowdens to the French King for his Protection and Assistance for which he was committed to the Tower and it was also confirm'd by the Fourth Article against the Five Members Accusing them to have Trayteroâ—sly invited and encourag'd a Forreign Power to invade his Majesties Kingdom of England Husband's Collections p. 35. These are the French Pensioners and the Betrayers of our Religion and Freedom under Oaths and Covenants to Preserve them Were not our Divines Pillag'd Sequestred Imprison'd either for praying for his Majesty or for Refusing to Abjure him How many Reverend Divines were poysoned in Peter-House I could give you the History of their Spiriting away several Persons of Honour for Slaves their Sale of three or four score Gentlemen to the Barbadoes Their Sequâ—strations Decimations Exclusion from all Offices Plunders Banishments Confinements Prohibition of Correspondence with the King upon Pain of Death The Juggles of the Irish Adventures Money and Plate upon the Propositions Confiscated Estates Twentieth Parts Weekly Assessments and a Hundred other Pecuniary and Arbitrary Stratagems till they finished the Ruine of the Nation in the Dissolution of the Government and in the Bloud of their Sovâ—reign It is not less certain that This is in Sum the Design of their Second Reformation than that it was the Effect of their Former and they are Fools that take Men of these Practises to be of any Religion FINIS
Unnderstanding betwixt his Majesty and his Two Houses can preserve this Kingdom Morally speaking from Irreparable Ruine And yet this is the Critical Juncture that the Libeller has made choice of for the blasting both of the Government and the Administration of it for the Violent Dissolution even of this most necessary Parliament for the sowing of Jealousies and alienating the Peoples Hearts from their Duty to their Sovereign Let the World now judge betwixt the Libeller and the pretended Conspiratours who are more probably the Pensioners of France those that are only Calumniated in the Dark and without any Proof or the least Colour of it or the Calumniators themselves I mean the Libeller and his Adherents who are doing all that is possible toward the Facilitating of the Work of France and the Putting of England out of Condition to defend it self What is it I beseech you that can now support us in this Exigent but the Wisdom and Reputation of a Parliament which they are at this very Instant labouring to defame and dissolve Distracting and Dividing the Nation at a Time when our best Union is little enough to preserve us and obstructing those Parliamentary supplys without which we must unavoidably perish For it is to this Session that the Libeller directs the Mock of Still giving Money toward their own Tragedy But sure we are not so mad yet as to take the Subverters of our Church and State for the Advocates of our Religion and Freedom I would know in the next place What any Man can say to excuse his Growth of Popery from being a Daring and a Spightful Libel against the King and his Government And I shall begin with the Liberties he takes with his Majesty sometime in direct Terms and otherwhile under the Blind of the Conspirators Speaking of the Shutting up of the Exchequer pag. 31. The Crown says he made Prize of the Subject and broke all Faith and Contract at Home in order to the breaking of them Abroad with more Advantage The Copy has in This Point outdone the Original for the Remonstrants were in Arms before they presum'd to word it at this Audacious height Take it in the Insolent Representation of the Fact the Malicious Construction and Presumption of the Inteut and to Both these add the Sordid Manner of Reflecting upon an Extraordinary thing done upon an Extraordinary Occasion and wherein the Subject has since receiv'd so Ample and Generous Satisfaction the Clamour is so foul as if an Aegyptian Plague were broken in upon us and the Frogs of Geneva crept into the King's Chambers And 't is much at the same Rate that he treats the King about his Declaration of Indulgence pag. 33. Hereby says he all the Penal Laws against Papists for which former Parliaments had given so many Supplyes and against Non-conformists for which this Parliament had pay'd more largely were at one Instant suspended in order to defrand the Nation of all that Religion which they had so dearly purchased c. Observe here how ungratefully he charges the Design of this Declaration to be The defrauding the Nation of their Religion which on the contrary was a Manifest Concession only to gratifie the restless Importunities of his own Gang. And see what Sport he makes but five or six Lines further with the very Reason of that Law which he takes here so hainously to be suspended It appears says he at the first Sight that Men ought to enjoy the same Propriety and Protection in their Consciences which they have in their Lives Liberties and Estates But that to take away these in Penalty for the other is meerly a more Legal and Gentile way of Padding upon the Road of Heaven and that it is onely for want of Money and for want of Religion that men take these desperate courses Now by his Favour there is a great Disparity betwixt a Pretence to Propriety and Protection in Consciences and a Pretence to them in Lives Liberties and Estates for the Latter are liable to Violence and may be taken away but the Other cannot And now he talks of Padding upon this Road the Remonstrants as I remember were very good at it that drove away from their Churches 85. Ministers of 97. within the Walls of London We 'll agree in the Matter with him That want of Money and want of Religion will put Men upon desperate Courses for my Charity perswades me he would never have written these Libels else He is a little positive methinks in Averring that a Great Lord lost his Place for defending the Protestant Religion pag. 44. But he has forgotten the Statute of his own Citing pag. 15. that makes it Incapacity for saying That the King is a Papist or an Introducer of Popery and that it was the King himself that remov'd his Lordship And what do you think of his Irony pag. 43. where he says that The Parliament by the Conspirators good Leave was admitted to sit again at the day appointed He tells us of another Affair too pag. 51 which being transmitted to his Majesty was easily chang'd into a Court intrigue And pag. 63. That the Conspiratours might so represent things to his Majesty as to incense him against the Parliament and distrusting all Parliamentary Advice to take Counsel from Themselves from France and from Necessity In this Disloyal and Irreverent Licence he drops you a word or two now and then before he is aware against the King himself and other whiles Discharges his Malice to the Government upon the Heads of Publick Ministers The Subject Matter of his Complaint is a Tendency of Counfels and Actions towards Tyranny and Popery But the King says he pag. 4. can do no wrong and so goes on nor can he receive wrong What is this but a Justification of all the Violences that were acted upon the late King even to the very Murther of him under that Mortal and Treasonous Distinction betwixt his AUTHORITY and his PERSON And an Allowance that the same Course may be taken with his Royal Successors The King can receive no wrong he says What does he mean by this Is not his Majesties Breath in his Nostrils Is he not Flesh and Bloud Is not his Body lyable to Wounds Distempers Emprisonment and Death He 'll tell you Yes but This is not the KING but the Man the PERSON But the KING all this while that is to say the Authority is Sacred and Invulnerable Now for Peace and Brevity sake let us suppose that this Charge of a Popish and Arbitrary Design does neither Intend nor Reflect any Imputation upon his Majesty his Religion and his Tenderness of Nature being Unquestionable It is yet a worse Libel another way Worse I say both as to the Drift and to the Scandal of it by how much Contempt is more dangerous to a Prince than Hatred For he employs his Utmost Skill to represent his Majesty only Passive in all his Administrations and so to lessen the Indubitable Fame of his Royal