to the High Court of Justice Jan. 4. 1648. and the eigth of January 1648. you may see the same Dorislaus appear in his Colours as one of the Chief Architects of that most Horrid Structure But That there can be no other Fountain and efficient Cause of Civil Power and just Authority but God That it is derived to Princes immediately from God and not solely or chiefly from the People That the Special Right and Title to it is from God alone And That God never gave his own glory to men to have the giving of this Power is that which is here endeavoured to be made apparent But first a little explication of Terms such as shall here occasionally be mentioned will not be amiss When the word Magistrate is used not every one that is vulgarly called by that Name is meant The inferiour Minister of Justice having no inherent power but deriving all his authority by Commission from the King is not the Magistrate here spoken of The King alone is the Magistrate properly so called who only is that Supreme Person whose Authority is not Commissionary but original formal inherent and inexistent as created in Him of God by communicating to Him the Image and Title of his Own Dominion and Power by which He Himself Governs the world And it is of the same Nature but more eminent with that authority which a Father hath over his sons which depends on no Act or Deed much less on any Concession or Grant of theirs And by this it also appears what must needs be meant by the Supreme Political Power and Authority to wit that Paternal and equitable and yet full and uncontroulable Dominion over the free people of the Land whose freedom consists in this that He Rules and Governs them as the Minister of God in true judgement and justice according to the known Laws ancient Customs and fundamental Constitutions of the Kingdom and that for the Common Good and Universal Benefit of all As a Father uncontroulably governs his Children yet for the equal and common Welfare both of Him and them What is meant by immediate Derivation of this Power from God which is often mentioned is next and last to be unfolded Things may be said to be of God or from God divers wayes 1. By his immediate Influx into the Essence of every thing as he is the Universal Cause of all things that have a Being 2. By his immediate Instinct Motion Special Help and Exciration as He is the Father of Lights and Giver of every good and perfect Gift and thus he gives to his Special Minister the Supreme Magistrate special grace wisdom counsel courage justice love to his people and a tender care of their Welfare 3. By his own proper Donation Grant and Conveyance of just Right Title and Interest And thus the Right and just Title to Supreme Government and Political Power comes immediately from God to the lawful Magistrate As every private Right Title and Interest to or in any thing must needs come to him that receives it immediately from the only just possessor and proper owner of it Such as God must needs be of all Dominion Government and Rule over the Nations of the world as their Sole Creator and Upholder For God of his own right being the only King and by his own Act the immediate Governor of and in all the actual Governments and Kingdoms of the world it incommunicably belongs to him to have the giving and conveying of the Right of Government to them that justly possess it And it incommunicably belonging to him to have the giving of that Right from him immediately must it needs come This way of Derivation and Collation of Civil Authority and the Right of it directly and immediately to the Supreme Magistrate from God the proper Fountain and formal Owner and actual Possessor of it who imparts it to the Supreme Magistrate not by alienation from but by communication with himself these ensuing Arguments by vertue of that high Principle upon which they are founded the Word of God will it may be hoped sufficiently prove and manifest to all but such as are given to change and are led by the Phanatick Spirit to Despise Dominion and to count all just Authority tyranny if they be not allowed to take the liberty to controul it at their pleasure to use the Lords Anointed as execrably as they have lately done and to shed the blood of the chief Nobility also to satisfie their filthy Lust I. Exod. 22.28 Thou shalt not revile the Gods nor curse the Ruler of thy People or the Prince among thy People GOD gives his own Name and Title to the Prince which were utterly incongruous and incompetible if he did not also communicate to him a competent proportion of his own authority and power But if God had given the whole civil Authority to the People and the People only and only upon their own account had given it to the Prince by such a meer extrinsecal Commission of authority from Men how could Princes be stiled Gods when those men themselves could never be stiled so I have said Ye are Gods likewise saith the Psalmist The reason whereof is expressely and purposely rendred by our Saviour in the Gospel * Psal 82.6 John 10.34 Because to them the Word of God came Which can signifie no less than that their Civil Power is given and conveyed to them by the express Word of God For it is God himself that saith by the mouth of David I have said Ye are Gods Therefore Dicit Christus Reges vocari Deos quòd munus sustineant divinitus sibi injunctum saith Calvin rightly upon those words that is Christ affirmeth that Kings are therefore stiled Gods because they bear an Office by Divine Injunction Who will say that the Peoples Election or Commission unless they were all Prophets is Divine Injunction Or who will say in express contradiction to the Text that not the Word of God but only the word of the People it was that came to them Where a Kingdom is by Custom elective the Case differs not For in this the Act of men is only instrumental to God In their electing who have right to elect God alone gives the right and the just Power to govern Which is apparent because this right and power the Electors themselves never had and therefore could never give it Briefly thus Whosoever can have the giving of Supreme Political Power can likewise have the giving of Gods own Name and Title No mortal men nor Angels in heaven can have the giving of Gods own Name and Title Therefore no mortal men nor Angels in heaven can have the giving of Supreme Political Power The Major is evident because God hath said to Princes I have said Ye are Gods and directed his Prophets to call them Gods for no other reason but because they communicate with God in that Supreme Power of Government that principally and properly is his peculiar Whence also the
They were told that Power was but derivative in the Prince and that of right the Soveraignty was theirs as properly inherent in them And that they could never recover their native Liberty but by casting off the yoke of all subjection to the most ancient and only lawful Government of the Nation till having lost the benefit of it and protection by it the pretended Liberty shew'd it self in its proper and true Colours of perfect bondage and misery The truth of this they have very long and very severely been school'd into Neverthelesse it is probable that many of them are not yet aware that so long as this pernicious Principle is where it was uncondemned and perhaps undiscerned by many the common danger of future Mischief by it is not yet removed Idem quâ idem semper facit idem If this and this only hath been the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the main leading Cause as indeed it hath of the slavery and misery we have long endured there can be no absolute and perfect Cure of these Evils with prevention of future danger without a total and timely removal of that Cause This Principle then had need be fetch'd out of the hearts and the heads of the Obstinate by a more powerful and effectual Confutation than that which is but verbal though never so Logical or Apodictical Argumentum baculinum or a good severe Law against it were perhaps at such a time as this no more than necessary But all they that have any thing of good in them will certainly by arguments truly and logically deduced from the Oracles of God effectually be wrought upon Especially considering that so long as this Principle remains in any credit and uncondemned That the proper and perpetual Right to the power is the Peoples Whensoever the multitudes of Seditious Spirits that are still though dispersed where they were and the same men they were and may secretly grow to be yet more in number can have the opportunity to rally and by Conspiracy get into a Body though they be not the fortieth part of the Nation they will by and by call themselves the people And then next to the grand Cheat Mockery of seeming Sanctimony by a false pretense of standing up for the Peoples Right bring the whole People many of their own party not excepted into that or a worse ruine and desolation if they can which no humane wisdom or power without the immediate helping hand of God could have now rescu'd and redeem'd us from That damnable Principle is therefore the most pernicious and dadgerous Cousenage that ever any people was abused and deluded by And if this were all it were not so fit for one of my profession to have medled with it But 't is also a Principle of Infidelity and of Rebellion against God as being expressely repugnant to the general Torrent of the Testimonies and Instances contained in His written Word And upon that precise account there is here endeavoured a Confutation of it AN Introduction Touching the state of the QVESTION WITH A Brief Explication of the Terms IT is the new and strange Doctrine of some of the late Jesuits more lately reduced into Practice by Persons professing the greatest Enmity and Opposition to those Innovators That the whole Political Power is not only originally from but formally inherent in the People Nota hanc Potestatem immediatè esse tanquam in Subjecto in tota Multitudine saith one * Bellar. lib. 3. de Laicis c. 6. Note that this power is immediately in the whole people as in the Subject of it And Pendet à Consensu multitudinis It depends upon the Agreement of the people saith the same Author And Potestas secularis est à Deomediatè quia Natura Recta Ratio dictat hominibus persuasit praeficere Reipublicae Magistratus saith another * Caanel à Lapide in his note upon Rom. 13.1 i. e. The secular power is of God but mediately because Nature and Right Reason which is of God doth dictate and hath perswaded men to set up Magistrates over the Common-wealth But saith the same Author Potestas Ecclesiastica immediatè est à Deo instituta The Ecclesiastical Power is ordained of God immediately This is true and so indeed must also that Original Power of Paternal Regality needs be which God by the Law of Nature hath ordained and by positive Institution settled of which his written Word gives us clear and certain Instances by which also He hath governed the world universally in the first ages of it and unto which He expresly commanded obedience to be yielded by one of the special Precepts of his moral and eternal Law then when there was no other kind of Civil Power extant in the world But this Device of Mediate derivation of the Civil Power and immediate Institution of the Ecclesiastick is invented and obtruded by these deceitful Workers to exalt the Pope to an absolute Soveraignty over all Kings and Princes and that not only in Spirituals but by the help of that Distinction of not directly but indirectly which is just as good as this of not immediately but mediately in all temporal and secular things and Causes too as well as in Spiritual In order to this Design intended by these Authors and in prosecution of many other farre Different Ends designed by the Anabaptists and others the Foxes have their tails tyed together in this false Principle equally common to both which is that Fire-brand that did for so long a time put these Nations into one general Combustion The self-same Principle was once delivered by one Dr. Dorislaus of infamous memory in the Schools at Cambridge in my hearing about thirty years since And had he then been punished as he was complain'd of according to his high Demerit and his dangerous Doctrine publickly condemned if it could have been by a just Law perhaps the mischief that hath since ensued of it in which the very same Man had a hand might have been prevented It hath also been more lately asserted by the Author of a seditious Pamphlet set forth about the beginning of our late fatal War entituled OBSERVATIONS upon some of His Majesties late Answers and Expresses wherein the Observators Fundamental Thesis confidently presumed and never proved is in these express words Power is originally inherent in the People And Power is but secundary and derivative in Princes the fountain and efficient Cause is the People And last of all the Author of the Armies Plea as 't was call'd affirmeth That Kings have no power and authority but what they have from the People Still the People are colloqued with and made believe all is their own till they are left Owners of Nothing but at the pleasure and allowance of their Covetous Undoers Why should I make these petty instances when this principle is become so National as to have the Countenance of a Vote in that which was called a Parliament as you may see in their Preparative
are chiefly to be noted 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Whether to the King as Supreme THe King then is Supreme by the express Word of God And there being none superior to him that is Supreme it is impossible and contradictious that any other pretended Authority should justly overtop and controll the Supreme Imperial Power of the King From hence it must follow That every Insurrection or levying of War against the King by what persons soever Subjects of the same Kingdom or in what capacity soever must of necessity be that unlawful Resistence which God threatens with damnation * Rom. 13.2 For To say that the levying War and taking up Arms within the Kings Dominions without the Kings Commission against the Kings Armies which have his Commission is no levying of War against the King is but a sad Apology and too weak a Plea for all the hope of those mens salvation who scorn to repent to rely upon For in this Text the weak and wicked principle from which that grand Mistake and all the Mischief that hath ensued is most expresly confuted For if the King be Supreme the People or the Peoples Representative is not unless it were true That the People or their Representative is the King For Whosoever is Supreme is the King The whole People is not the King Therefore The whole People is not Supreme The Major is apparent because the Apostle ascribes the Supremacy to the King and to no other unless in one Kingdom there could be two or more Supremes which would infer a manifest contradiction He that denies the Minor must be sent to Bedlam Therefore the Conclusion is unavoidable The whole People is not Supreme Much less their Representative though virtually the whole Least of all a Party apostatizing from their faith given to the People and their promissory Oath to the King joyning with and approving the Armed force and violence which excluded their Fellow-Members that were more in number and so of greater authority than themselves out of that House into which they had been legally called by the King and sent by the People Yet how gloriously those Apostates could arrogate to themselves the Title of The Supreme Authority of the Nation Which was frequently given them also by their close Adherents and some other ignorant and besotted people XIII Exod. 20.12 Honour thy Father c. THat the Civil Magistracy and Paternal Authority are really the same though not gradually and so the former as well as the latter immediately derived from God and not at all from Man it most demonstratively appears in that Obedience is commanded to both by one and the same precept and signified by one and the same word in this moral and eternal Law of God For if the Authority of all Magistracy be not established upon this moral precept what ground is there for it How comes it to be morally lawful to be any Magistrate at all especially so far as in any case to be a Revenger and to punish any person especially for less than Murder with death since it is God alone that is the Lord of life If then the Civil Authority be established onely upon the same precept of the Moral Law which is the proper foundation and the adequate measure of all just Laws and lawful actions and the Magistrate there included in that word Father which the Paternal Authority it self is onely grounded on both that and this must necessarily be the self-same power and cannot differ really but only modally or gradually in the different Object and Execution And at that time when this Law was onely in the hearts of men and afterward with the whole Decalogue delivered to Moses and long after that too there was no Government in the world beside the Regal And this appears by the words of the people to Samuel Make us a King to judge us like all Nations * 1 Sam. 8.5 and also by all Instances that can be named Therefore the onely Magistratical Authority established at first of God himself upon this moral precept of his eternal Law was Regal And the Regal power being the same really and originally with the Paternal it certainly follows That the People do no more authorize their King than Children their Father to have dominion over them And it must needs be as lawful if not much more for Children to call their Natural Father to an account to depose him or to put him to death as for any People to do so to their Civil Father the King the LORD' 's Anointed FINIS
HONI SOIT QVI MAL Y PENSE DIEV ET MON DROIT THE SEDITIOUS Principle Viz. That the Supreme Power is inherent in the People and that perpetually as in the proper Subject Upon which the late lawlesse Actings against the KING were grounded and from which the long Thraldom and Misery of the three Nations did ensue Examined and Confuted By JOHN NOVELL B. D. LONDON Printed for Sarah Bartlet at the Gilt Cup in Westminster-Hall 1662. Perlegi hunc Tractatum cui Titulus The Seditious Principle c. Examined and Confuted Quem Lectu Typis dignum judico M. Franck S.T.P. R. P. Epis Lond. Ã sacris domesticis Feb. 26.1661 2 May it please Your Majesty THis unhappy Posthumus was intended to kisse Your Majesties hand before the Authors death but by some ill fate hath trewanted by the way till now of late it came to me who having had a former acquaintance with it in loyalty to Your Sacred Majesty duty to my Countrey and obedience to the Authors meaning whom I had the honour to call Tutor dare do no lesse than publish and present it nor could I have abused this opportunity without a tacite condemnation of my self as accessory to this horrid Principle The Dregs whereof hang too much in the heads of many mistaken moderate persons and still continues lurking in corners and building strong holds in secret and seditious Conventicles And to give it an honorable Pedigree they make it of kin to that ancient frontispiece of the Common Laws of England Salus populi suprema Lex Where without doubt the King in good manners must needs be understood in the first place as Head of the people and in case our Division-mongers shall take the King and people as distinct Estates it can bear no other meaning than that the health and welfare of the people is the strength of the King who is the life of the Law But their crooked constructions are like bad constitutions that turn the best of meats into the worst of humors And to give this popular principle the more formality and priviledge it must be denizon'd by the Taile of that Serpent-Parliament the memory whereof is only happy in the Act of Oblivion and laid up in their Journal as a perpetual magazen for the fifth of November or a recruit in taile to the black and dismal day of our late Kings murder Your Majesties Royal Father Though our late combustions by Your Majesties Providence and prudence are alayed for present yet 't is justly to be feared they will never be extinguished so long as this Principle hath one spark of life or being in the hearts and heads of your Majesties subjects To which the Author most humbly offers this expedient And if Your Majesty shall please to give a second life to him by a countenance of these lines with Your gracious acceptance without doubt You will find them bear a very considerable part in Your Majesties Life-guard But my duty to him forbids me all Encomiums knowing how little he loved them and how much lesse he needs them Now may it please Your Majesty since Your Pardon hath prevented the utmost darings of all mens askings I shall not be desperate of mine for assuming this boldnesse being the real effect of a heart brim full of affection and loyalty to Your most Sacred Majesty and upon that confidence shall presume to beg leave to write my self Your Majesties most humble and Loyal Subject JOHN SHADWELL TO THE KINGS most Excellent Majesty Most gracious and dread Soveraign THat ingenuous and true Loyalty which is due to your most Sacred Majesty if it can yet be as duly rendred is the truest and surest foundation of the whole peoples civil happiness and safety That which is most opposite to that true Loyalty is the late unchristian policy most perniciously practised in these Nations upon the false ground of this most erroneous and seditious Principle That the Supreme Political power is both originally from and still inherent in the People In the Confutation whereof which may by some other be much more irrefragably done All these persons that have from the very beginning of our late miseries in any Way or in any Capacity acted directly or indirectly against your Majesties Royal Father of ever blessed and most precious memory and against your most Sacred Majesties own Person and just Right will find themselves not a little concerned They will easily see that if this Principle be proved false the only pretence of lawfulnesse for all their lawless actings is utterly taken away For even to themselves and to all other men it is most apparent if duly considered that from this Principle arose the Confidence or Pretence of lawfulness so the most unlawful usurping of the power of the Militia their taking Armes by their pretended Authority from the People their making pretended Acts of Parliament without the Royal Assent their most impudent accusing and most sceleratious condemning of Your Majesties Royal Father expresly in the name of the People and which was the root of all the evil their first Covenanting to alter the fundamentals of Government and to abolish that which stood fully established by all the Law of England without any Concurrence of the Royal Authority and in a forcible and violent opposition against it their Ejecting the whole House of Lords and most unrighteous banishing of Your most Sacred Majesty upon pretence of sole Soveraignty in the People whose Representatives they would even in despight of the People be then esteemed For all which unrighteous practises and many other most nefariously perpetrated against all Law Divine and Humane the Authors Actors Abettors and Approvers have no other pretence of Apology by which they yet continue in impenitency besides their own Opinion or Dissimulation of this most false Antiscriptural and most seditious Principle Therefore any confutation of this will perhaps irritare crabrones too much irritate the whole nest of Hornets with all their disloyal and Antichristian Faction there being but little hope of more than forced Repentance from them that have sinned wilfully after they had received the knowledge of the truth and hence it is there is so little appearance yet of any such thing How seasonable therefore such a Corrosive may be to that old Sore that is but newly skinn'd it is not easie for any private person to determine Yet the Conscience of my necessary duty to serve God and Your Majesty and to defend Your most Sacred Authority in my way to the uttermost of my power hath enforced me to this Endeavour which I most humbly submit to Your Majesties Censure pleasure and Pardon as becomes Your Majesties most devoted Servant and lowest Subject JOHN NOVELL A Short Account of the danger of this PRINCIPLE THis popular and loose Doctrine was easily learned and greedily swallowed by many undiscerning People And by this were they soone flattered into their own undoing and made very active Contributers to their own destruction
themselves must needs be principal under God in the governing of their own Civil Body and consequently all Government must of necessity be Democratical For even in a simple Democracy if any such be the whole people being utterly incapable of doing any Act of Government themselves in their universal Body must needs govern by some One or some few deputed and impowred by them If then in an ancient and lawful Monarchy the King or Monarch were but the peoples Minister or Deputy and only by them impowred Monarchy and Democracy were formally the self-same and no real or so much as formal difference between them which were manifestly false and contradictory Whosoever hath his Authority to govern from the people is the peoples Minister in governing themselves The Minister of God in governing the people is not the peoples Minister in governing themselves Therefore The Minister of God in governing the people hath not his Authority to govern from the people But consequently from God himself If this Minister of God were the peoples Minister then not only God but the people were principal in inflicting death which no Angel nor man but as Gods Minister only is any more capable of than of giving life God only is the Lord of life Therefore as the whole people cannot give to one man life so neither can the whole people have a just power to take it away None can justly destroy Gods image but God let the Cause be what it will And the power which the people have not they cannot give It is therefore God alone and not the people that gives to the Supreme Magistrate the Power to execute wrath and to punish with death IV. Judg. 7.20 The Sword of the Lord and of Gideon IN the whole Word of God there is neither mention nor intimation of any such thing as the Power of the Sword in or from the people But as here The Lord and Gideon so the Lord and the chief Magistrate such as Gideon was then made are only mentioned in Scripture to have any interest in that Power Whatsoever power is in the people is in them either principally or ministerially The power of the Sword is not in the people either of these wayes Therefore it is not at all in them The disjunction is undeniable The Minor is apparently true in respect of both for the principal power of the Sword can be in none but God and the Ministerial power of it can be in none but Gods Minister The Conclusion therefore is infallible The power of the Sword is not at all in the people And if this power be not in them which all political power doth either consist in or depend upon what other power can be where that of the Sword cannot Yet the Phanatick Spirit had of late taught many weak people to believe That the peoples Representative though really not that was the only Supreme Authority of the Nation as they commonly call'd the late Authours of our greatest evils But if what was phansied the peoples Representative by their own choice were the only Supreme and the only just Authority in every Nation and consequently the Kingly Office and Government in it self unjust and inconsistent with Liberty as all out Republican Zelots commonly asserted then all these consequences are inevitable viz. First That if Justice did everywhere obtain which God doth everywhere command that is If Gods own Will were done he must needs lose his own glory to be King of Kings for there would be never a King in all the World beside himself Secondly That God no less the Worlds immediate Governour than its Creatour having generally goven'd it ever since the Creation of it by the Monarchical which is really the same with the Paternal and Patriarchal power hath been all this while to seek how to govern it in the only just and good that is in the pure Democratical or simple Republican way or by Successions of Representatives or no man knowes what for which there hath never yet been one Example in the World Thirdly That all the good Kings of Israel as well as the bad and all those Kings and Queens over Christian Nations who God did promise should be nursing Fathers and nursing Mothers to his Church were and are all and every one of them even Queen Elizabeth among the rest wicked and unrighteous persons that is Tyrannical and unjust Invaders of the peoples Right and Subverters of their Native Liberty Fourthly That Gods promise in that particular must or of right ought to have been totally disappointed Fifthly That God himself was then the Authour of injustice and Tyranny when he sent his Prophets to anoint Saul and David and Solomon and Hazael and divers other Kings These and many other irrational and intolerable consequences must unavoidably follow if it were true That the peoples just Right and Liberty did only and formally consist in having the Supremacy of all Civil power in their own hands or at their disposal Another vulgar Errour consequent to the former was That the good of the people is not at all concerned in the Supremacy of power residing in the Prince and that the Kings Prerogative is to them no priviledge but in all a prejudice as they were senslesly made believe to publick Interest and Liberty The Kings Majesty in virtue of His Supremacy hath the Prerogative power as well of dissolving as of calling Parliaments If such a Parliament should come which God avert as should begin to do what the late long Parliament hath done the Nation would then scon learn to believe That the Kings Prerogative to dissolve such a Parliament would do them no harm The great end of Government and of the Supreme Kingly Prerogative and power is doubtless the general Welfare of the people Therefore most assuredly in such an anciently constituted Kingdom and after so many Lawes and Charters securing for ever the peoples Interest and Liberty no understanding man will now be made believe after the late horrid delusion That there is any ancient and legal Prerogative or power belonging to the King but is certainly though not visibly to all conducing directly to the general good and welfare of the people If the due Administration of Justice by the power of the Sword and of the Lawes of the Land against all wrong-doers and against all perturbators of the publick Peace in what place of capacity soever be for the general good of the whole people then assuredly the greater the Supreme Governers power and Prerogative is the greater is the whole peoples present safety and future security And for this cause it is that God hath given not another but his own Sword to his sole Vice-gerent the Supreme Magistrate The Sword of the Lord and of Gideon V. Numb 27.16 17 18 19. Let the Lord the God of the Spirits of all flesh set a man over the Congregation which may go out before them and which may go in before them and which may lead them out and